^ "^^ ^ %: 



^j^ V'' 



,0 o^ 



.^5 -u 









^-^. .,^^ 



o 0' 












x-^^ 






4' 















-is^ f^ .0Wy>:, -f 



c 









^ .\^^~ 



'.V' 






■^^ 



.0^ 






-0> 



OO^ 






^\^ , V 



1>^^ 

A^^' -^^ 









.v\^" 



^y_ v■^' 



aV -/', 





^.,x^^' 




:.^-^ 


"b 0^- 




o5 '^<;^ 








V' •»■ 



cV^^' 









o^ -n^ 



o>' 





-^^S^ 






,0 o^ 


■ '^-'-^ 






v' 



.\' * 



% *" A^ . 



,0 a 



-^^ 






o 









0,^ -^^ 



.^■\ 



^ s 









o 0^ 



/ ^^. 






7>_. v^- 



.^^ 



^^ . N r, 
rvV 1., " 






.-^ 






\ 







o 0' 



,0 o 



-^. c*^ 



.-\ 






x\^ 






THE EARLY YEARS 
OF THE SATURDAY CLUB 

1855-1870 



THE EARLY YEARS 

of the 

SATURDAY CLUB 

1855-1870 

By Edward Waldo Emerson 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HouHGTON Mifflin Company 
mdccccxviii 



/"'/ ^' 



COPYRIGHT, I918, BY THE SATURDAY CLUB 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVKD 

Published December tQtS 



7 



^o 



DEC 26 Ibid 
'CI.A508700 



/ 



59 
PREFACE a*? 

ON the title-page of this hook I appear as the author; the duty of 
preparing it was assigned to me hy the Club, and I have worked 
for several years searching for and gathering material for this chron- 
icle and building with it as best I might. But because of the eminence 
of the men who formed this happy company, and of those whom they 
chose to join them; also because, in those awakening and stirring 
times, they laboured, each in his own way, but sometimes combining, 
to serve, to free, and to elevate their Country, — the story of the Club took 
on larger dimensions. Hence, to hasten the appearance of the book, I 
asked our associate Professor Bliss Perry to give his help. It has 
been most valuable. At his suggestion, four other members have writ- 
ten sketches for the book; Mr. Perry contributed nine, Mr. Storey 
two. Governor McCall one, Mr. DeWolfe Howe one, Mr. Edward W. 
Forbes one. Each is signed with the initials of the writer. To all of 
these my thanks are due for excellent help. 

The original plan of the Club was to preserve a record of its first 
half-century of existence. By sanction of the Club only sixteen years 
of its history are here presented, but they tell of its Golden Age. 

To the families or representatives of deceased members whose biog- 
raphies, journals, or poems are quoted, the thanks of the Saturday 
Club are here rendered. If, by inadvertence, there has been failure to 
ask leave of these, the entire good-will of those whom I have approached 
makes us sure of their approval. 

The publishing houses have all shown us courtesy and generosity. 
First should be gratefully acknowledged the debt owed to Messrs. 
Houghton Mifflin Company for their furtherance of this work by 
freest permission to quote largely from books published by them, me- 
moirs or poems, or those containing anecdotes of our members. 
Messrs. Little, Brown and Company kindly let us freely quote from 
" The Art Life of William Morris Hunt,'' by Miss Knowlton, and the 
*^ Memoir of Henry Lee," by Mr. John Torrey Morse, and to both of 
these authors we owe thanks. To Messrs. D. Appleton and Company 



vi Preface 



we owe free quotation from Miss Hale^s ^^ Memoir of Thomas Gold 
Appleton^^ and leave to reproduce the best portrait of him; to Messrs. 
G. P. Putnam's Sons, use of much matter from Dr. James K. Hos- 
mer^s ''^ Last Leaf' ; to The Macmillan Company, the use of passages 
from the ''^ Life of Edwin L. Godkin"; to Messrs. Harper and Broth- 
ers, quotations from Horatio Bridge's ^^Recollections of Hawthorne," 
and passages from some others of their older publications. Messrs. 
Charles Scribner's So7is have most courteously given permission for 
many extracts from Henry James, Jr.'s, ^''Memories of a Son and 
Brother." We are grateful to Mr. John Jay Chapman for much 
charming material taken from his '^Memories and Milestones." 

This wide quotation was essential in the production of this work 
and we hope that the younger generation may, perhaps, by these ex- 
tracts, be drawn to the original sources. 

To Mr. Herbert R. Gibbs we owe the careful Index to this volume, 
and great pains have been taken by the Art Department of The River- 
side Press in securing and reproducing the portraits in our gallery. 

Edward Waldo Emerson 
Concord, November, 191 8 



CONTENTS 

Introductory . . xi 

I. The Attraction i 

II. 1855-1856. The Saturday Club is Born: Also the 

Magazine or Atlantic Club 11 

III. 1856 21 

Louis Agassiz 30 

Richard Henry Dana, Jr 39 

John Sullivan Dwight 46 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 53 

Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar 63 

James Russell Lowell 72 

John Lothrop Motley 82 

Benjamin Peirce 96 

Samuel Gray Ward 109 

Edwin Percy Whipple 117 

Horatio Woodman 124 

IV. 1857 128 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 135 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 143 

Cornelius Conway Felton 159 

V. 1858 166 

William Hickling Prescott 180 

John Greenleaf Whittier 188 

VL 1859 197 

Nathaniel PL\.wthorne , 207 

Thomas Gold Appleton 217 

John Murray Forbes 227 



Vlll 



Contents 



VII. i860 234 

Charles Eliot Norton 238 

VIII. 1861 249 

James Elliot Cabot 260 

Samuel Gridley Howe 269 

Frederick Henry Hedge 277 

EsTES Howe 282 

IX. 1862 287 

Charles Sumner 297 

X. 1863 309 

Henry James 322 

XI. 1864 334 

John Albion Andrew 357 

Martin Brimmer 366 

James Thomas Fields 376 

Samuel Worcester Rowse 388 

XII. 1865 392 

XIII. 1866 407 

Jeffries Wyman 420 

XIV. 1867 428 

Ephraim Whitman Gurney 442 

XV. 1868 447 

XVI. 1869 456 

William Morris Hunt 465 

XVII. 1870 474 

Charles Francis Adams 484 

Index 503 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Louis Agassiz Frontispiece 

Louis Agassiz at the Blackboard . . . , . .30 

Richard Henry Dana, Jr 40 

John Sullivan Dwight 46 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 54 

Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar 64 

James Russell Lowell 72 

John Lothrop Motley 82 

Benjamin Peirce 96 

Samuel Gray Ward no 

Edwin Percy Whipple . . .118 

Horatio Woodman 124 / 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 136 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 144 

Cornelius Conway Felton 160 

The Adirondack Club 170 1/ 

From the painting by William J. Stillman 

William Hickling Prescott " . .180 

John Greenleaf Whittier • 188 

Nathaniel Hawthorne 208 

Thomas Gold Appleton 218 

John Murray Forbes 228 

Charles Eliot Norton 238 

James Elliot Cabot 260 

Samuel Gridley Howe 270 

Frederick Henry Hedge 278 

Estes Howe 282 

Charles Sumner 298 



X 



Illustrations 



Henry James 3^2 

John Albion Andrew • • 35^ 

Martin Brimmer 360 

James Thomas Fields . 37^ 

Samuel Worcester Rowse 388 

From a sketch by himself in a letter , _ . 

Jeffries Wyman 420 

Ephraim Whitman Gurney 44^ 

William Morris Hunt 4^6 

Charles Francis Adams 4^4 



INTRODUCTORY 

TWELVE years ago the Saturday Club sent to me, absent, 
its mandate to do it a service, honourable but difficult. 
Mr. Norton, our President at that time, last survivor, revered 
and loved, of the fellowship of the earlier years, wrote: "The Club 
is about fifty years old, and it occurred to me that it would be 
well if a history of it were written before its story became faint, 
and before more legends of dubious validity gathered around it. 
... I spoke of this, a day or two since, to President Eliot, and 
found that he was quite of my mind. When he asked me who 
could do the work, I told him that I hoped you might be willing to 
undertake it, and this suggestion he received. ... I hope you will 
entertain it readily, and even that it may allure you. The subject 
seems to have many attractions, for it admits of studies of the 
character of many of the most remarkable men in our community 
during the last half-century." 

I wrote at once to Mr. Norton that I was much honoured by 
being deemed fit by the Club for so interesting a work, but saying 
that I could not feel that I was so, not having been chosen a 
member until it had existed a third of a century when most of the 
first glorious company of friends were gone, and urged that he, 
who knew them so well, would write his memories. He answered 
that he was too old to do so, but would gladly receive me at his 
home and help me with his recollections. So it seemed that I must 
do, as best I might, the will of the Club. I had to ask its patience, 
being already pledged to a task only lately brought to an end. I 
gladly availed myself of the invitation of this hereditary friend, 
and in his delightful study passed three or four mornings asking 
questions and taking notes of his memories, but I had no right to 
weary him. It is sad to think how much more I might have 
learned that no one now can tell, and soon he was taken away. 
Others, too, have gone, or their memories become dim. But still 
I have had the privilege of hearing from persons of an older gen- 
eration — some of them ladies — reminiscences of our great 



xii Introductory 

members. I have sought in books written by or about them, or, 
in letters, journals, poems, anything that might carry us into 
their presence or their meetings. But how little remains of what 
was so much to them! 

One trouble, embarrassing to deal with, confronts the chronicler 
at the outset. At the present time there are more than seventy 
names of departed members; of these Appleton, Dana (and his 
biographer Adams), Emerson, Fields (through his wife's records 
of his home conversation), Forbes, the two senior Hoars, Holmes, 
Henry James, Sr., Longfellow, Lowell, Norton, Whipple, Whittier, 
have left, in their books, journals, letters, or poems, passages 
about the Club such as it would be natural to introduce about 
the members or the events in which they bore a part, but these 
are the only ones I find affording such help. Even should a few 
more be found to have left records, that would still leave more 
than half a hundred men of eminence or charm from whom no 
words about this goodly fellowship remain. I search for first- 
hand memories of the early days and find that our two oldest 
surviving members did not enter the Club until the fifteenth 
and nineteenth years respectively of its existence, and took no 
notes — any more than we do. However fortunate it was for 
members at the time that "The Club had no Boswell," as Dr. 
Holmes said, who might have been one's next neighbour at 
table, yet, for the present purpose, we may add his word "un- 
fortunately." For several years there was not even a secretary. 
When such an office was created, its successive holders held that 
the records must be confined to business, and, being gifted souls 
who walked on higher planes, often let weeks — once almost a 
twelvemonth — pass without an entry. 

t Happily there were at least eight poets in this friendly group, 
and as many more to whom affection or some occasion gave the 
impulse to verse. Thus, if the story drags, it can be helped on its 
way by the poems called forth by occasions of joy or sorrow. Of 
poems not easily placed in the narrative a group will be found at 
the end. 



THE EARLY YEARS 
OF THE SATURDAY CLUB 

1 855-1 870 



Hie manus oh patriam pugnando vulnera passi, 
Quique sacerdotes casti dum vita manebat, 
Quique pii vales et Phoebo digna locuti, 
Inventus aut qui vitam excoluere per artes, 
Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo ; 
Omnibus his nivea cinguntur tempora vitta. 

VIRGIL, ^NEID. BOOK VI 

Here the heroes abide, war-mangled in cause of their country^ 
Here men holy, spotless in life till its pilgrimage ended. 
Loyal bards anigh them sang true to the song of j4 polio. 
Wise men also, helpers by wit of man in his toiling. 
They who, faithful in life, made others mindful of duty ; 
Lo ! the fillet gleams snow-white on each forehead immortal. 



THE EARLY YEARS 
OF THE SATURDAY CLUB 

Chapter I 
THE ATTRACTION 

Redeunt satumia regna. 

Virgil, Eclogues 

IN the middle of the last century a constellation, which — as 
separate stars of differing magnitude, but all bright — had for 
twenty years been visible, at first dimly, in the New England 
heavens, ascending, was seen as a group, gave increasing light and 
cheer here and to the westward-journeying sons and daughters; 
reached our zenith; even began to be reported by star-gazers be- 
yond the ocean. .-a ■' «* 

These brave illuminators, — poets, scholars, statesmen, work- 
ers in science, art, law, medicine, large business, and good citizen- 
ship, — by the fortune of the small area of New England and its 
few centres of ripening culture, were more easily drawn together. 

In the summer of 1855, eleven of these agreed to meet for 
monthly dinners in Boston. They soon drew friends with genius or 
wit into their circle. * 

When the often asked question comes up, — Why did so many 
men suddenly appear in that generation, eminent in their various 
callings, using their gifts nobly for the public good, simple livers 
withal; and why, with another half century's immense advantages 
and opportunities, nothing like it has appeared in this country ^ — 
an answer might be hazarded something like this: The struggle 
for existence, in the new country, with untamed nature and man 
in the seventeenth century; in the eighteenth, the first only les- 
sened and the second increased by the French and Indian neigh- 
bours, and later, by the oppression of the mother country; then, 
early in the nineteenth, a modified repetition of the latter, and the 



T'he Saturday Club 



general poverty resulting from both. Over and above all this 
struggle for life and scant comfort, leaving no time for literature, 
science, and art, not only did the prolonged danger and the expense 
of crossing the ocean forbid enlightening travel to all except a 
few merchants and statesmen, but villages and smaller towns were 
practically shut off from the larger centres, now cities. 

But at the time when most of these gifted men of the Eastern 
States were growing boys, the years of danger, famine, and ex- 
treme struggle had gone by, a moderate prosperity had come, 
stage-lines were established on the roads, ships were better, schools 
and colleges were improved and the latter not regarded mainly as 
training places for ministers and teachers; religion was assuming 
a milder and more human form, which softened life In the homes. 
Some good libraries, beside those In the colleges, were established, 
— the fame of new books, and then the books, crossed the sea, 
there was time to read, also eager appetite, only sharpened by 
indulgence and by the references to other authors in Great Britain 
and on the European continent. Through Coleridge, attention 
was turned to German philosophy, and Schiller's and Lessing's 
verse, and, through Carlyle, to Goethe. 

Aspiring young scholars — George Ticknor, the Everetts, Ban- 
croft, Cogswell, Frederick H. Hedge, Charles T. Brooks of New- 
port — went to pursue their studies in Germany, while students 
of medicine and natural science — as Holmes, Bigelow, Charles 
T. Jackson — went to Paris, as also did art students like William 
Morris Hunt, — and others, like Crawford, Powers, and Story, 
to Rome — visiting England on the way. Others went for gen- 
eral culture, like Prescott, Sumner, Longfellow, Cabot, and Park- 
man. Their horizon and their field of literature were broadened. 
They had seen art and culture; also oppression, and brave men 
struggling towards liberty. Full of new emotions, they returned 
home, now aware of America's deficiencies, but exulting in her 
opportunities. They became teachers in various fields, and their 
influence, reinforced by many patriot refugees from Germany, 
like Dr. Follen and Francis Lleber, was inspiring to the young 
generation. 

A general spiritual and intellectual awakening which seemed in 



The Attraction 



the air, gained force from this enHghtening influence. Eager study, 
more valiant and original writing, combinations for discussion be- 
gan; communities gathered in brave hope to make life more sen- 
sible, many-sided, higher in its plane; reforms of every sort were 
urged and tried, the fruitful one of which was that against Slavery. 

But concerning the New Englanders born in the first third of the 
nineteenth century, it is essential to keep in mind this fact, that, 
to these more cheerful and independent descendants of Pilgrims or 
Puritans, life was still serious, amusement occasional and second- 
ary; they still lived in the presence of the unseen; they worshipped, 
and went apart for solitary thought; many of them came in con- 
tact with life's stern conditions, largely served themselves and 
practised self-denial and were familiar with economic shifts; they 
were hardier than we, and the few rich ones would be now deemed 
only in very moderate circumstances. Duty walked beside them 
from childhood. The struggle against the then aggressive and ad- 
vancing institution of Slavery, and the vast war in which this culmi- 
nated, sobered and yet inspired, in its later days, that generation. 

On that crisis followed the growth of the country, its prosper- 
ity, the miracles wrought by Science in every occupation, and in 
the house, — also wider relations. We all know too well the re- 
sulting hurried and complicated life, the high pressure in work and 
in play, favourable to quick wits and athletic bodies and great na- 
tional achievement, — unfriendly to the higher promptings of the 
Spirit in solitude, and the finer perceptions guiding life and colour- 
ing production. The later generation does its task bravely, but it is 
of a different kind, and does not meet the same wants. The old 
ground now lies fallow. In time its better crop should spring up. 

But, to go back a little, in "the thirties" and "the forties," as 
part of the general awakening, revolution began to appear here 
and there in education, religion, social and political institutions, 
for new questions and impulses came to the consciences of the 
wise, and also of the unwise, and these had to be considered and 
perhaps tried. Such times are uncomfortable, but had to be gone 
through, for insistent propagandists thronged the roads of New 
England, and John Baptist voices would be heard. 



The Saturday Club 



But in the early "fifties" times were pleasanter to live in. The 
reforms had been sifted. Questions like Fourierite community- 
life, extreme vegetarianism and avoidance of slave-labour prod- 
ucts, abolition of domestic service, — even of money, and of 
marriage, — had been considered and dismissed. Temperance 
had met with a gratifying degree of success. Conscience had won 
away from the old Whigs a large and strong party, Anti-slavery 
people were no longer despised, and imperious Southern rule was 
now realized and increasingly opposed. All this made for peace 
and more genial social relations here when the new ideas had passed 
the crude stage. And yet to have been born and to have come 
into active thought and deed in those years of strong and conflict- 
ing tidesof intellect and conscience, surely moved and strengthened 
the characters of many of the men of whom this story treats. 

THE DESIRE AND THE FORESHADOWING 

Certain foreshadowings of our Club appear by 1836. Mr. Emer- 
son's and Mr. Alcott's journals during this period record frequent 
gatherings at private houses in Boston, Concord, or Medford for 
interchange of thought, apparently without regular organization, 
— friends meeting and inducing other friends to come, — yet the 
name "Symposium" seems to have been used for such a gather- 
ing. The meetings were by day to suit country members, but such 
an hour naturally limited the attendance to scholars, clergymen, 
writers, and men of leisure, and no refreshments were served. 
Among the men whose names I find, more than one half were or 
had been clergymen —-- Rev. Ephraim Peabody, Rev. Frederick H. 
Hedge, Rev. Convers Francis, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Rev. 
William Henry Channing, Rev. Theodore Parker, Rev. Cyrus A. 
Bartol, Rev. Caleb Stetson, and, then unfrocked, George Rip- 
ley, John Sullivan Dwight, George Partridge Bradford, Orestes 
Brownson, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the laymen were 
Amos Bronson Alcott, James Elliot Cabot, Jones Very, sometimes 
Henry James, Thoreau once at least. Six of these were, later, 
members of the Saturday Club. Here then were sublime specu- 
lation, theology, metaphysics, scholarship, poetical aspirations, 
and philanthropy. But though music also was represented by 



The Attraction 



Dwight, and Cabot, beside his philosophy, was interested in art 
and in natural history, one feels that the metaphysical fencing was 
sometimes tedious to all but the swordsmen, and that Alcott's 
lofty and long flights out of sight from the plane of the under- 
standing, and ignoring its questions, might have vexed these; 
that the aggressive Parker's blows at beliefs as they were must 
have troubled the more delicate Ephraim Peabody and George 
Bradford, and Emerson too, in spite of his respect for him. In 
short, that such a group needed lightening, dilution, lubrication 
by wit, humour, helles-lettres^ art, the advance of science, and to 
be more in touch with the active life of the world. 

At about the time when the Symposia languished, perhaps 
about 1844, Emerson wrote in his journal, "Would it not be a good 
cipher for the seal of the lonely Society which forms so fast in 
these days, — two porcupines meeting with all their spines erect, 
and the motto, *We converse at the quills' end'?" 

From perhaps too constant association with philosophers and 
reformers, Emerson, about the time when the Symposia ceased, 
was finding great refreshment and pleasure in a friendship with 
Samuel Gray Ward, a young man of high aspirations, careful 
breeding, much natural gift for and knowledge of art, and en- 
tirely at home in society and literature. A series of letters, given 
below, show the foreshadowing and the gradual evolution of the 
Saturday Club. Six years before its existence Emerson was talk- 
ing over with his friend a scheme of a more genial nature than the 
Symposia for a Town-and-Country Club, where lonely scholars, 
poets, and naturalists, like those of Concord, might find a welcome 
resting-place when they came to the city, and meet there, not only 
other scholars and idealists, but also men of aflfairs, and others 
with the ease and refinement and cultivated tastes that society 
and travel had given them. 

Emerson was in England in 1847 and 1848, and in the latter 
year writes to Ward thence of the literary and society men he had 
met: "They have all carried the art of agreeable sensations to a 
wonderful pitch; they know everything, have everything; they 
are rich, plain, polite, proud, and admirable, but, though good for 
them, it ends in the using. I shall, or should soon, have enough of 



6 The Saturday Club 

this play for my occasion. The seed-corn is oftener found in quite 
other districts. But I am very much struck with the profusion of 
talent." 

The above letter was one of many written to him by Emerson, 
which Mr. Ward, a year or two before his death, sent to Mr. Nor- 
ton to help on the history of the Club, introduced as follows. 
Mr. Ward wrote : — 

Washington, March 27, 1906. 
My dear Norton: — 

As soon as I found by your letter that you and Edward Emer- 
son are in search of material for the History of the Saturday Club, 
it occurred to me that, some years ago, in reading over Emerson's 
letters, I found more than one reference to its beginning, and, on 
sending for the letters to look the matter up, the first thing I laid 
my hand upon are the enclosed letters which go back to the very 
beginnings. 

I find by the letter (Emerson's), 5th of October in that year 
[1849], what I had entirely forgotten, that the first suggestion 
came from me, and you will see how warmly Emerson took it up 
and made it his own. 

But a letter, written three months before the one which Mr. 
Ward alludes to, shows that the Town-and-Country Club was not 
altogether a failure in his friend's mind; also that it included five 
future members of the Saturday Club besides himself: — 

Concord, 12 July, 1849. 
My dear Ward: — 

The Club is not so out at elbows as your friend fancied, for be- 
sides other good men whom I do not remember, Cabot was there, 
who is always bright, erect, military, courteous, and knowing, a 
man to make a club. 

Then Edward Bangs, Edward Tuckerman, Hawthorne, a good 
Atkinson whom Cabot brings, Hillard, Lowell, Longfellow, and 
other men of this world, have all shown themselves once, and, 
with a little tenderness and reminding, will all learn to come. There 



The Attraction 7 

is a whole Lill's Park also with tusks and snakes of the finest 
descriptions.^ Belief is the principal thing with clubs, as well as 
in trade and politics, and already we have such good elements 
nominally in this, that the good luck of a spirited conversation 
or one or two happy rencontres^ could now save it. Henry James 
of New York is a member, and I had the happiest half-hour with 
that man lately at his house, so fresh and expansive he is. My view 
now Is to accept the broadest democratic basis and we can elect 
twenty people every month, for years to come, and yet show black 
balls and proper spirit at each meeting. So, pray you to shine 
with all your beams on our young spirit. . . . 

Yours affectionatelv, 

R.'W. E. 

From the next three letters it would seem that Ward had pro- 
posed the formation of a smaller, perhaps a dining club, including 
certain members of the former one, who would be comfortable and 
genial as well as wise convives. Emerson gladly falls in with the 
plan, but, loyal to Alcott, proposes him as one. The Channing he 
desires is not the whimsical Concord poet, but his good and en- 
thusiastic cousin, Rev. WiUiam Henry Channing. i 

Concord, September 12, 1849. 
My dear Ward : — 

. . . You will be in town in the winter, — it is a great happiness, 
— and will know how to extract the club of the club. Cabot, Chan- 
ning, Alcott, Hillard, Longfellow, Edward Bangs, there are many 
bright men whom the sHghtest arrangement would assemble, — 
perhaps to the comfort of all, — can they not bring their cigars to 
the Club Room, or to the next room on a given evening.'' In these 
days, when Natural History is so easily paramount, I should put 
most trust, as I myself should certainly prefer, that the nucleus 
of the company should be savants. But Tuckerman,^ I believe, is 

* Lili's Park is a half-humorous, poetic, autobiographic allegory of Goethe's, in which 
he represents himself as a bear in subjection to Lili's charm. 

* Edward Tuckerman, Professor of Botany at Amherst College. Dr. Asa Gray called 
him the most profound and trustworthy American lichenologist of his day. 



8 'The Saturday Club 

in Europe, and Desor ^ is gone exploring. These people are a very- 
clear, disinfecting basis. But I wish to see you and Cabot. 

Ever yours, 

R. W. Emerson. 

•«. «w - ►-'*■> 

Very probably Mr. Ward had answered Mr. Emerson's letter 
of September 12 and suggested that some of the men mentioned 
by him, especially Alcott, would not help in general good fellow- 
ship, and suggested in his letter a more congenial company. 

Here follows the letter which Mr. Ward spoke of in his letter 
to Norton : — 

5th October, 1849. 
I should be delighted with your plan of a circle, if it can be 
brought about; but I fear I am the worst person that could be 
named, except Hawthorne, to attempt it. If Tom Appleton were 
here, and had not lost all his appetites, he is a king of clubs — but 
I suppose he is full. Cabot, Bangs, ^ and William [Henry] Channing 
are the men I should seek, and Henry James of New York, if he 
were here, as he used to talk of coming. . . . He is an expansive, 
expanding companion and would remove to Boston to attend a 
good club a single night. 

Again he writes : — 

' • "?• Concord, 26 December. [1849.] 

I was in town an hour or two yesterday, thoughtless of Christ- 
mas, when I left home, and was punished for my paganism by not 
finding you, and not finding any one with whom I had to do, at 
their posts. But for your Club news, it is the best that can be. 
I saw Bangs two or three days ago, and Bradford^ on Sunday. 
Both heard gladly, but both made the same doubt — they had 

^ Edward Desor, a young Swiss naturalist and geologist, met Agassiz at Neufchatel in 
1837 and became his collaborator in his Alpine studies. Ten years later, he came with 
Agassiz to the United States and was Agassiz's assistant in his researches at Lake Superior. 
He returned to Switzerland in 1852. 

* Edward Bangs, a lawyer and man of agreeable presence and literary tastes. 

' George Partridge Bradford, a scholar and teacher, genial and refined but excessively 
modest. He was the brother of Mrs. Samuel Ripley, Mr. Emerson's aunt by marriage, 
and great friend. 



T^he Attraction 



nothing to bring. Yet they will doubtless both be counted in. 
Bradford did not know but he was home on some points; thought 
the Club had better give the supper, and not the members. Then 
there is always the same supper, and tender persons will not offer 
you wine, but the guilty, broad-shouldered Club only. Certainly 
it is better to have the Club the perpetual host, and not each 
bashful member. The persons named by Longfellow are doubt- 
less desirable, Appleton in the superlative degree, but I suppose 
him all preoccupied. Yet Longfellow should know. Billings I do 
not know; nor Perkins; yet have no objections. Agassiz again I 
suppose quite too full already of society.. What night is best.'' 
Monday is freest. For me, I think Tuesday and Wednesday are 
inconvenient for [attending] the Club; Tuesday chiefly because 
our village Club of twenty-five farmers, &c., meets on that night 
and I do not wish to resign. But we must ballot for every night 
in the week, and for which has the most marks. 

Ever yours, 

R. W. E. 

Saturday, 29 December. [1849.] 

My dear Sam: — 

I shall be in town Monday and will go to your office at 3 o'clock. 
Bradford named George Russell, and thought he would like to 
join. Rockwood Hoar, the new judge, is a very able man, and 
social ; do you know him t Eustis, ^ the new professor at Cambridge, 
Is said to be valuable, and I have always hoped to know Tucker- 
man, the botanist; who, I believe, is just now in Europe. I am 
not sure that I feel the need of pressing none but householders. 
Minors and cadets make better clubs, and I am usually willing 
to run the risk of being the oldest of the party. . . . 

Yours, 

R. W. E. 

The dream now seems nearing realization, for Longfellow wrote 
in his journal, February 22, 1850: "Dined with Emerson at 
Lowell's. We planned a new club to dine together once a month." 

* Henry Lawrence Eustis, Professor of Engineering in the Lawrence Scientific School. 



lo "The Saturday Club 

Emerson now felt encouraged, and wrote two days later to 
Ward: — 

24 February, 1850. 
I saw Longfellow at Lowell's two days ago, and he declared that 
his faith in clubs was firm. "I will very gladly," he said, "meet 
with Ward and you and Lowell and three or four others, and 
dine together." Lowell remarked, "Well, if he agrees to the dinner, 
though he refuses the supper, we will continue the dinner till next 
morning!" Meantime, as measles, the influenza, and the magazine 
appear to be periodic distempers, so, just now, Lowell has been 
seized with aggravated symptoms of the magazine, — as badly as 
Parker or Cabot heretofore, or as the chronic case of Alcott and 
me. He wishes me to see something else and better than the 
Knickerbocker. He came up to see me. He has now been with 
Parker, who professed even joy at the prospect offered him of tak- 
ing off his heavy saddle,^ and Longfellow fosters his project. Then 
Parker urges the forming of a kind of Anthology Club: ^ so out of 
all these resembling incongruities I do not know but we shall yet 
get a dinner or a "Noctes." 

Ever yours, 

R. W. E. 

* The short-lived l^ew England Magazine, of which Parker was editor. 

* The Anthology Club was of men of letters which had existed in Boston in the early 
years of the century. Emerson's father was one of its members, and editor for a time of 
the journal, The Monthly Anthology, from which that club took its name. 



Chapter II 
1855-1856 

THE SATURDAY CLUB IS BORN 

ALSO THE MAGAZINE OR ATLANTIC CLUB 

The flighty purpose never is o'ertook 
Unless the deed go with it. 

Shakspeare 

THOUGH the haze of remoteness and of failing memories 
had, even before the end of the last century, begun to ob- 
scure the origin of the Saturday Club, and also because of a mis- 
apprehension by outsiders very natural because of its personnel, 
it is still possible to discover through the dimness two threads 
between which this group of remarkable men oscillated for a time 
as a centre of crystallization. One was friendship and good-fel- 
lowship pure and simple. The other was literary, and involved 
responsibilities, namely, a new magazine. In each, as moving 
spirit, there was an active, well-bred, sociable man, eager for this 
notable companionship and with executive skill ready to manage 
the details of the festive meetings. 

Two clubs actually resulted, and nearly at the same time. Of 
this, conclusive documentary evidence exists, some of which will 
be here given and some referred to. The membership of these 
clubs was, at first, largely identical. The merely friendly group 
soon became elective; somewhat later took the name the Saturday 
Club, increased much in size, in time was incorporated, and still 
flourishes, a pleasant, utterly informal company of men more or 
less eminent, dining, or rather having a long lunch, together on the 
last Saturday of each month, except July, August, and September. 
The other club, designed to interest the best authors in launching 
a really good magazine, might have been at first properly called 
the Magazine Club, but not until 1857 did it give birth, as will be 
told in detail, to the Atlantic Monthly j and, after that, the frequent 



12 



The Saturday Cluh 



simple meetings of the Atlantic Club were not long continued. At 
increasing intervals, however, the publishers gave notable ban- 
quets to the growing company of the magazine's contributors. 

The men who brought the Saturday and the Magazine Club, — 
later, Atlantic Club, — respectively, into actual existence, but with 
quite differing purposes, must now receive their due credit. 

Of Horatio Woodman, who really brought the Saturday Club 
into being, Mr. F. B. Sanborn tells that he came to Boston from 
New Hampshire,^ was a friend of the Littlehale family of whom 
Mrs. Ednah Cheney was one, and was introduced by her to Mr. 
Alcott. Very likely also Mrs. Cheney introduced him to Emer- 
son. Mr. Woodman was a member of the Suffolk Bar; he was a 
bachelor, and had rooms probably first at the Albion Hotel on 
Tremont Street, where Houghton and Button's great store now 
stands; certainly, later, at Parker's hotel. 

Mr. Woodman loved the society of men of letters, and was in 
the position and had the skill to bring them together now and then 
for a cheerful, leisurely dinner at a public house. From the testi- 
mony of Mr. Dana's journal, confirmed in almost every respect 
by Mr. Samuel G. Ward in conversation with Mr. Charles F. 
Adams, Jr., when he was writing Dana's life, the substance of 
the following account of the beginnings of the Saturday Club is 
drawn. Mr. Emerson very often left his study in Concord on a 
Saturday to go to the Athenaeum Library, call on friends, or see his 
publishers on business. He was Hkely to drop in at the original 
"Corner Bookstore" of Ticknor and Fields on the corner of 
Washington and School Streets, and Woodman would find him 
there, ask him where he was going to lunch, and suggest one of 
the good inns near by. Presently finding that Emerson, with the 
aid of his intimate but much younger friend, Sam G. Ward, had 
in mind the formation of a social dining club of friends, men of 
various gifts and attractions. Woodman worked gradually toward 
the realization of this hope, naturally In such a way as would in- 
clude himself. He had an undoubted gift to manage the details of 
such a club. 

* Mr. Woodman was born and brought up in Buxton, Maine, but may perhaps have 
taught school in New Hampshire, 



T'he Saturday Club is Born 1 3 



Very probably other extempore dinners, arranged by Woodman, 
may have taken place earlier, but this letter Is the first record 
which I have found. About a year before the Saturday Club was 
really born, Dana wrote In his diary for 1854: — 

"December 16. Dined at the Albion in a select company of 
Emerson, Lowell, Alcott, Goddard (of Cincinnati, lecturer), an 
English gentleman named Cholmondely (Oxford graduate), a 
clever and promising Cambridge student named Sanborn, and 
Woodman. It was very agreeable. Emerson Is an excellent dinner- 
table man, always a gentleman, never bores, or preaches, or dic- 
tates, but drops and takes up topics very agreeably, and has even 
skill and tact in managing his conversation. So, indeed, has Alcott; 
and it is quite surprising to see these transcendentalists appear- 
ing as men of the world." 

In a later entry, in his diary, Mr. Dana, gives further evidence 
of these loose gatherings for Saturday dinners which Woodman 
made and managed pleasantly. 

Another of these informal premonitions appears in the following 
letter from Woodman to Emerson: — 

Boston, June 5, 1855. 
Dear Mr. Emerson: — 

At the Revere House on the evening when the surges from our 
end of the table broke in foam over you, Mr. Agasslz and Mr. 
Peirce agreed to join you, Mr. Whipple, and me over a beefsteak 
at Mrs. Meyer's ^ at half past 2, on Saturday next, when you 
said you would be there. Unless I hear from you, I shall surely 
expect you, because otherwise It would be getting them by false 
pretences. 

They have such genuine and undogmatizing value, — Mr. 
Agasslz, especially, dips [jzV] so naturally and swallow-like from 
what Is profound to the highest trifle, that we ought to be thank- 
ful to meet them. 

Really, I thought, as I talked with each in turn the other night, 

' This was a good restaurant on Court Street nearly opposite Hanover Street. Mrs. 
Meyer was said to have been the sister of the elder Papanti, who taught three generations 
of Bostonians to dance. 



14 'The Saturday Club 

of imagination, how few literary men among us had so much of it 
and could talk so closely and instructively of it. 

Perhaps Richard H. Dana, Jr., may join, and of course any one 
else you think of, except that the stock of provisions- may be short 
without previous notice, if many more are invited. 

Always truly yours, 

Horatio Woodman. 

But now comes on the scene Woodman's competitor, with a 
more serious end in view, which handicapped his desired club from 
the first; a man bright and genial and loyal, but who had a rather 
disappointing ending of his life, though not, like the other, sad 
and sudden. Our member, and my associate, Mr. Bliss Perry, 
thus pleasantly speaks of Francis H. Underwood: "A graceful 
writer, and a warm-hearted, enthusiastic associate of men more 
brilliant than himself. Underwood's name is already shadowed 
by . . . forgetfulness. . . . But he played the literary game de- 
votedly, honestly, and always against better men. ... In 1853, 
when he was but twenty-eight, he conceived the notion of a new 
magazine. Some such project had long been In the air, as Is evi- 
dent from the letters of Emerson, Alcott, and Lowell, but Un- 
derwood was the first to crystallize it. It was to be anti-slavery 
in politics, but was to draw for general contributions upon the 
best writers of the country. . . ." The contributors, Mr. Perry 
says, had already promised, and Underwood should have enjoyed 
the full credit of the enterprise. "Then came, alas, the hour of 
bitter disappointment. J. P. Jewett and Co, failed, and the maga- 
zine plans were abandoned. . . ." 

Mr. Underwood then became associated with the firm of Phillips 
& Sampson and made himself valuable as their literary adviser 
and reader. Never letting drop from his mind his dream of a 
magazine in Boston superior to any that the country had« yet 
seen, he lost no opportunities of meeting with the New England 
authors, and it was he who organized, somewhat loosely, a dining 
club meeting at Parker's on Saturday afternoons. This jovial 
letter from Professor Felton of Harvard College shows how early 
these dinners began : — 



"The Saturday Club is Born 1 5 

Cambridge, Friday, Feb. 13, 1856. 
In bed. 

My dear Underwood : — 

I am much obliged to you for taking the trouble of informing 
me of to-morrow's dinner — but It is like holding a Tantalus' 
cup to my lips. I returned 111 ten days ago from Washington, hav- 
ing taken the epidemic that is raging there at the present moment 
and have been bed-ridden ever since, living on a pleasant vari- 
ety of porridge and paregoric. Yesterday I was allowed to nibble 
a small mutton-chop, but it proved too much for me and — here 
I am worse than ever. I have no definite prospect of dining at 
Parker's within the present century. My porridge is to be reduced 
to gruel, and paregoric Increased to laudanum. I am likely to 
be brought to the condition of the student in Canning's play; 

"Here doomed to starve on water gru- 
El never shall I see the U- 
Niversity of Gottingen." 

And never dine at Parker's again ! I hope you will have a jovial 
time; may the mutton be tender and the goose not tough; may the 
Moet sparkle like Holmes' wit; May the carving knives be as 
sharp as Whipple's criticism; May the fruits be as rich as Emer- 
son's philosophy; May good digestion wait on appetite and Health 
on both — and I pray you think of me as the glass goes round. 

Horizontally, but ever cordially. 
Your friend, 

C. C. Felton. 

In the above letter appear the names of four early members of 
the Saturday Club. 

In August of that year, Emerson writes to Underwood, saying : — 

I am well contented that the Club should be solidly organized, 
and grow. I am so irregularly in town, that I dare not promise 
myself as a constant member, yet I live so much alone that I set 
a high value on my social privileges, and I wish by all means to 
retain the right of an occasional seat. 

So with thanks and best wishes, 
Yours, 

R. W. Emerson. 



1 6 The Saturday Club 

This letter, while showing good-will to an authors' club, seems a 
little evasive, and the reason would not be far to seek, for the long- 
hoped-for freer gathering, of friends, with no spectral obligations 
to furnish poems, essays, contributions serious or gay, haunting 
the banquet-room, was now either already provided or close at 
hand. The awkwardness of much the same group of friends com- 
ing to meet, and on Saturdays, at the same place, under different 
auspices, was apparent. Naturally the friends preferred to with- 
hold fixed allegiance while they yet might. 

Mr. Underwood, as a man, they liked, but he was also an eager 
agent for a publishing house, and possessed with a design. Yet 
they were willing to come occasionally to a dinner, where the new 
magazine, which many of them had desired as much as he, was 
to be made possible. 

Less than three weeks after the letter to Underwood given 
above, Emerson writes to Ward of their long-wished-for club as 
though already existing: — 

September 12, 1856. 
By all means do not forget 't is the last Saturday of each month. 
For the scot — I always pay through Woodman. 

Dr. Holmes, In his later years, writing of the Saturday Club, 
says that because of its being composed of literary men and coming 
into being at about the same time with the establishment of the 
Atlantic^ "The magazine and the Club have often been thought 
to have some organic connection, and the 'Atlantic Club' has 
been spoken of as If there was or had been such an institution, but 
it never existed." ^ Mr. Underwood wrote to the Doctor protest- 
ing against this statement. "You remember," he writes, "that the 
contributors met for dinner regularly. It was a voluntary in- 
formal association. The invitations and reminders were from my 
hand, as I conducted the correspondence of the magazine. I have 
hundreds of letters in reply, and it is my belief that the associ- 
ation was always spoken of either as the Atlantic Club or the 
Atlantic Dinner." The Doctor stuck to his assertion, but Mr. 

^ Holmes's Lije oj Emerson, p. 221. 



The Saturday Club is Born 17 



Underwood was right. It must be remembered that Dr. Holmes's 
memory naturally was not surely to be trusted at his age, and that 
he was not among those who planned the Club, nor a member until 
its second year, when the Atlantic scheme had passed from the 
state of an enterprise to that of a certainty. 

Mr. Underwood, who had become literary adviser of the firm 
of Phillips & Sampson when, after the death of Mr. Sampson, 
Mr. Lee had been taken into the firm, had inoculated this gentle- 
man thoroughly with his magazine yearning. Then, Mr. Bliss 
Perry says, in his generous paper on "The Editor who never was 
Editor" in the Fiftieth Anniversary number of the Atlantic 
Monthly^ that it was Underwood who pleaded with the reluctant 
head of the firm of Phillips, Sampson & Co. As "our literary man," 
in. Mr. Phillips's comfortable proprietary phrase, "Underwood 
sat at the foot of the table among the guests at that well-known 
dinner where the project of the magazine was first made public." 
In Mr. Scudder's Life of Lowell is given the interesting letter of 
Mr. Phillips to his niece, in which he tells of this festival which 
resulted in the Atlantic Monthly. His invited guests were, in the 
order in which he names them, Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, 
Motley, Holmes, James Elliot Cabot, and Mr. Underwood. They 
sat five hours; Mr. Lowell accepted the editorship, making it 
a condition that Holmes should contribute; he (Holmes) promised, 
and, withal, named the newborn infant. Underwood, eager in the 
enterprise, soon visited England to secure the services of the first 
British contributors. Recognizing that Lowell's name was of the 
highest importance to the success of the new venture, Underwood 
loyally accepted the position of his " ofBce editor," as assistant to 
a more gifted chief. Mr. Underwood was so useful and active as 
assistant, until about i860, that many of the contributors sup- 
posed him to be the editor.^ It is probable, and the inference may 
be drawn from what Lowell said in the first number of the Atlantic^ 

^ Whatever may have been the reason of the severing of Mr. Underwood's connection 
with the Atlantic, it is certain that his steady purpose, through discouragement, was a 
prime factor in its coming to birth, His modest loyalty and his courtesy must have made 
him in its infancy an important help to his sterner chief in dealing with contributors. He 
won lasting esteem from them. Here is one of several kind letters that came to him, in hid 
later days, as Consul in Glasgow and in Edinburgh, and as author: -^ 



1 8 T'he Saturday Club 

that there were a few more dinners that might have been called 
"of the Atlantic Club," but the Saturday Club displaced these, 
and the later Atlantic banquets were given by the publishers. 
Of these an interesting account was given by Mr. Arthur Oilman 
in the Fiftieth Anniversary number of the magazine,^ and one 
given to Whittier will be mentioned later in this book. 

Mr. Emerson's journal bears amusing witness to the existence of 
this second and temporary club. He wrote, "We had a story one 
day of a meeting of the Atlantic Club when, the copies of the new 
number of the Atlantic being brought in, every one rose eagerly 
to get a copy, and then each sat down and read his own article." 

This perhaps too long trial of the case of the Atlantic Club vs. 
the Saturday Club may be properly closed by the following de- 
cision by a man of law, Mr. John Torrey Morse, in his excellent 
memoir of Dr. Holmes: "The discussion is of little moment unless 
perchance this Club shall become picturesque and interesting for 
posterity as did the Club of Johnson and Garrick and the rest, — 
which I fear will hardly come to pass. Certain it is that nearly all 
the frequent (male) contributors to the magazine, who lived 
within convenient reach of the Parker House, were members of 
the Club, or doubtless might have been so had they desired; and 
that for a long while a multiplicity of nerves and filaments tied 
the magazine and the Club closely together. Equally certain it 
is that, from the outset, a few members of the Club were never 
contributors to the magazine, and that all these nerves and fila- 
ments have long ere the present day been entirely severed." 

50 Chestnut St., Boston. 
April IS, 1875. 
My dear Mr. Underwood, — 

... I wish that your connection with the Atlantic could have been continued long 
enough to give your literary powers and accomplishments a fair chance of just recogni- 
tion. It is for the interest of us all that men like you should be rated for what they are worth. 
Harvard College and its social allies answer a very good purpose in defending us — to some 
extent — against the literary clap-trap and charlatanry which prosper so well throughout 
the country; but those who are neither Harvard men nor humbugs may be said to be 
the victims of their own merit, having neither the prestige of the one nor the arts of the 
other. . . . 

With cordial regards. 
Very truly yours, 

F. Parkman. 

* Atlantic Dinners and Diners. 



The Saturday Club is Born 1 9 

The intending and the formative period of the Saturday Club 
comes to a close late in 1855, or early in 1856, when these friends, 
drawn together by affinity, yet their wish made fact by the ac- 
tivity of an admirer outside their circle whose friendly skill in 
arranging for their dinners had obliged them, — some of them, 
too, bringing in a special friend by common consent, — began to 
call themselves a club, as yet without a name. Those who may be 
called undoubted original members, as so considered in the year 
1856, given In alphabetical order, were Louis Agasslz, Richard 
Henry Dana, Jr., John Sullivan Dwight, Ralph Waldo Emer- 
son, Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, James Russell Lowell, John Lo- 
throp Motley, Benjamin Peirce, Samuel Gray Ward, Edwin Percy 
Whipple, Horatio Woodman, eleven in all. Longfellow's name 
does not appear In this list because of the entry in his journal next 
year as follows: "March 28th, 1857. Dined with Agasslz at his 
club which he wishes me to join, and I think I shall." That he 
joined next month is evident from his letter to "Tom" Appleton, 
then in Europe, written May 14: "We have formed a Dinner Club, 
once a month, at Parker's. Agasslz, Motley, Emerson, Peirce, 
Lowell, Whipple, Sam Ward, Holmes, Dwight (J. S. Journal of 
Music) ^ Woodman (Horatio, a member of the Suffolk Bar), 
myself, and yourself. We sit from three o'clock till nine, generally, 
which proves it to be pleasant." 

In writing the letter he forgot Dana and Judge Hoar, mentioned 
Dr. Holmes who had been Included as a member at the last meet- 
ing, and tells his brother-in-law that he too is a member. All this 
shows the truth of Mr. Norton's recollection that formal elections 
were not held nor records kept In the first year or two of this ag- 
gregation of friends through mutual suggestion and consent. As 
for Appleton, it has already been shown that Emerson wrote of 
him to Ward in 1849 that he was "desirable in the superlative 
degree," but that then he supposed him preoccupied. So It is 
evident that only his absence In Paris at this time, and not hav- 
ing consented, prevented Appleton's assured membership. On his 
return he was enrolled. Agasslz and Peirce soon had the satisfac- 
tion of bringing in their neighbour and friend. Professor Cornelius 
Conway Felton. 



2 T^he Saturday Club 

Adding Holmes and Felton, and counting out Appleton, until 
his return and acceptance, we may say that the Club, agreed 
upon as such by the friends, in the informal stage, 1855, 1856, 
and 1857, numbered fourteen.^ Dana wrote in his journal that the 
last two mentioned members were chosen on the first vote taken 
in the Club, making the number "fourteen, as many as we wish to 
have." Mr. Adams, in his Lije of Dana, expresses his belief, 
fortified by some tradition from older members, that the matter 
lay thus in Dana's mind because he thought so, but doubts whether 
the others did. At any rate, the Club in a few years doubled its 
members, showing that Dana did not avail himself uncharitably 
of his blackball. a«<5 _.i . ^j ,, , ; 

^ Emerson, in a notebook in which he wrote of his friends, sets down J. Elliot Cabot's 
name among those chosen in 1857. Emerson had his friend's election much at heart. Very 
possibly he was chosen then, but did not accept. Neither Dana nor Longfellow mentions 
Cabot in their list of early members in their journals, and in our record-book his member- 
ship dates from 1861. 



Chapter III 

1856 

Quotque aderant vates rebar adesse deos. 1 

Ovid 
And each inspired one here I'll count a god. 

IT seems well in this chapter to tell, first, in what classes of 
men the original fourteen belonged; then, of the hostelry 
where they always met; and last, to try to describe them one by 
one. 

Giving the men of letters, as most numerous, the first mention, 
there were four poets, one historian, one essayist, one biologist and 
geologist, one mathematician and astronomer, one classical scholar, 
one musical critic, one judge, two lawyers, and one banker. This 
classification is rude. Three of the poets were essayists; among 
the men of letters the professions were represented, for Holmes 
had been a practising physician, Emerson and Dwight had been 
clergymen. Lowell and Motley, later, represented their country 
in European Courts, and Dana refused such an opportunity; Judge 
Hoar became Attorney-General of the United States, and Felton 
became President of Harvard University, in which Agassiz, Long- 
fellow, Lowell, and Peirce were professors. Peirce was the Super- 
intendent of the Coast Survey. Ward, although the representative 
of a great English banking house, had marked artistic and literary 
gifts. 

. Very early, after the experimental gatherings at the Albion, the 
meeting-place where dinners were held was either the small front 
room on the second floor of "Parker's," or, when the Club grew 
larger, the large front room just west of it. The long windows looked 
out on the statue of Franklin, — what a valuable member he 
would have made, had Time allowed it! — in the open grounds of 
the City Hall. 

^ This is the motto written on the first leaf of Emerson's notebook of his friends which 
he named Gulistan. 



2 2 ^he Saturday Club 

The older members will recall the two notable adornments of 
the original dining-room. These were, first, an oil portrait of the 
genius loci, Harvey D. Parker himself, looking on with masterly 
but kindly face to see that all went smoothly and creditably. The 
picture shows no trace of a grief that rankled in his mind. "It Is 
written of him by Captain John Codman that he once said: *I 
wish they'd pull down that old King's Chapel opposite. Such kind 
of buildings are n't no use these times.' If he ever did make that 
philistinic remark, he amply atoned for it in his will." ^ For the 
first large bequest which the Museum of Fine Arts received was 
$100,000 from Mr. Parker. Behind the portrait in merit, far sur- 
passing it in ambitious design, was a painting, an apotheosis (If 
such is possible on horseback) of Charles L. Flint, President of the 
State Agricultural Society, surrounded by its (also mounted) offi- 
cers. The picture is a symphony in pink. Mr. Flint, flushed with 
pleasure, gracefully takes off his hat to banks of fair pink-faced 
ladies in pink bonnets, on the long grand-stand. Perhaps the pic- 
tures symbolized the roseate future of the farmer's life in Massa- 
chusetts as it must have seemed after the "Cattle Show" dinner 
and oration on a perfect day in late September in the fifties. 

Here gathered, then, with more regularity of attendance than 
now, the friends, at three o'clock in the afternoon of the last 
Saturday of the month, very possibly through the summer heats, 
for summer migrations to the farther North Atlantic shores, or to 
England, Scotland, or Switzerland, were then less common and 
easily made than now. Mr. Woodman very kindly assumed the 
burden of the business arrangements and managed the feast. He 
knew well how to do this acceptably, and seemed to have a singu- 
larly Intimate acquaintance with the best possibilities of Parker's 
larder. The charge was divided among the members present, who 
paid for their guests, and bills were sent from the office. If few 
members came, and absentees forgot to send notice, the charge 
was sometimes large. I remember an occasion in my early mem- 
bership when three only came, and our bills were nearly seven 
dollars apiece. But the dinner was excellent and much more elab- 
orate than the lunch of the present day; seven courses at least, with 

* Boston Transcript, MsiTch li, 1911. 



i856 



23 



sherry, sauterne, and claret. Any one who wished to pledge his 
neighbour or his guest in champagne, or who desired Apollinaris 
for his digestion, had personally to pay for such courtesy or indul- 
gence. The cocktail did not in those days forerun the banquet, 
nor yet at this writing has it appeared. The various good wines 
were offered at suitable times "to cheer the heart of man." But 
the immortals of that goodly company, like their more abstemi- 
ous successors of the day, held with old Panard, — • 

" Quand on boit trop, on s'assoupit 
Et on tombe en delire; ': 

Buvons pour avoir de I'esprit, ■ 
Et non pour le detruire." 

The company was so well chosen and of such varied gifts that 
no one, on those more peaceful Saturday afternoons of sixty years 
ago, was restlessly thinking of other engagements. All but the 
Concord men lived within five miles of the State House, and 
reluctant early departure of these for their last home train was 
soon made needless by the kind action of one of them, as later told. 

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., had from Mr. Sam G. Ward these 
memories from the early days of the Club: — 

"Agassiz always sat at the head of the table by native right of 
his huge good-fellowship and intense enjoyment of the scene, his 
plasticity of mind and sympathy. ... I well remember amongst 
other things how the Club would settle itself to listen when Dana 
had a story to tell. Not a word was missed, and those who were 
absent were told at the next Club what they had lost. Emerson 
smoked his cigar and was supremely happy, and laughed under 
protest when the point of the story was reached." 

Referring to this same early and golden period, Dr. Holmes 
wrote : — 

"At that time you would have seen Longfellow invariably at 
one end — the east end — of the long table, and Agassiz at the 
other. Emerson was commonly near the Longfellow end, on his 
left. There was no regularity, however, in the place of the mem- 
bers. I myself commonly sat on the right-hand side of Longfellow, 
so as to have my back to the windows; I think Dana was more apt 
to be on the other side. The members present might vary from a 



24 "The Saturday Club 

dozen to twenty or more. . . . Conversation was rarely general. 
There were two principal groups at the ends of the table. The most 
jovial man at table was Agassiz; his laugh was that of a big giant. 
There was no speechifying, no fuss of any kind with constitution 
and by-laws and other such encumbrances. I do not remember 
more than two infractions of the general rule of quiet and decorum, 
— these were when Longfellow read a short poem on one of Agas- 
siz's birthdays, and the other when I read a poem in honor of 
Motley, who was just leaving for Europe." 

Dana, though he had been a member from the early gathering, 
omitted to record that fact at the time. He writes in his diary on 
August 6, 1857: "I believe I have nowhere mentioned the Club. 
It has become an important and much valued thing to us." 

Dana's social gift, especially as a raconteur^ was an important 
asset for the Club, the more because of the difficulties of general 
talk at so large a table. But, in the summer of 1856, soon after the 
Club crystallized, he made his first visit to Europe, a short one, 
which, however, accounts for his late mentioning of the monthly 
festival, which he valued. But the Club reaped the harvest of 
this on his return. -^ 

In his youth, Dana had known the sea as a place of constant toil 
and danger — • and loved it. Now, twenty years later, after brave 
and effective work, as a lawyer and as a good citizen, he sailed for 
England, a calm passenger on a Cunard steamer. His reactions 
when the time came, shown in his diary, are interesting. He writes: 
"Actually bound to Europe, — the Europe of my dreams, that 
I hardly dared believe I should ever see. But now that the time 
has come, I am so intensely interested in my own country, in the 
impending struggle between the free classes and the slave power, 
that I cannot conjure up a thought of England. Her history, her 
cathedrals, her castles, her nooks and corners, all lose their signi- 
ficance, and have no hold on my feelings or fancy." He did not 
realize how soon and strongly these would awaken. 

And first the sea rejoiced his heart. His journal fairly shouts: — 

"What is like the sea for healthfulness, vigour, and joy! And 
to me, beyond all this, the infinite delight of freedom from all 
labour, the certainty of nothing to do, the certainty that there is 



i856 



25 



nothing I can do. No matter how many strings you have left 
flying, no matter what occur to you as things you might do or 
ought to do, you banish and forget them all in the knowledge that 
miles of blue water, — a mare dissociabile — makes them impos- 
sible. To me, this is an unspeakable delight." 

But a greater was to follow; after rest, most restful recreation. 
For if ever an American was born to enjoy England it was Dana. 
In his humanities and in his professional contests and political 
course he had shown himself, and always did, democratic in the 
fine sense, a loyal American. But in his tastes, his social predi- 
lections, his choice of form of worship, he seemed more akin to 
Englishmen than to his own people. Indeed, it might seem to him 
that, after a long American dream, the ancestral blood in him had 
awakened at last in its own country. It is a pleasure to read how 
England, with Stratford as its crowning delight, satisfied his soul, 
daily, and at each new turn. 

In this connection it is pleasant to recall that Longfellow, at 
this period, was, like Dana, in the acute joy of freedom from 
routine duties, — for in 1854 he had resigned his professorship, — 
and this was heightened a few months later by the selection of 
Lowell as his successor, though many desired the place. It might 
seem that Lowell's course on Poetry, just then delivered at the 
Lowell Institute, which, in its quality, was a surprise and a 
triumph, won him this appointment. His friends gave him a din- 
ner at the Revere House just before he started on his year of study 
abroad. The company included most, if not all, of the members of 
the Club, just then about to take form. Norton thus describes 
this dinner in a letter: — 

"Longfellow was at the head of the table and Felton sat oppo- 
site to him. Lowell was at Longfellow's right hand and Emerson at 
his left — and the rest of the party was made up of Holmes, and 
Tom Appleton, and Parsons, and Agassiz and Peirce, and eight 
or ten others, all clever men. Longfellow proposed Lowell's health 
in such a happy and appropriate way as to strike the true key- 
note of the feeling of the time. Then Holmes read a little poem of 
farewell that he had written, and then, after an interval filled up 
with conversation, he produced two letters addressed to Lowell, 



2 6 T^he Saturday Club 

one from the Reverend Homer Wilbur and the other from Hosea 
Biglow. They were very cleverly done, full of humour and fun, 
and made great shouts of laughter, which continued all through 
the evening to roll up in great waves from the end of the table 
where Felton and the best laughers generally were seated. It was 
really a delightful, genial, youthful time, and had Lowell only 
just come home, instead of being just about to go off, nothing 
would have been wanting." ' 

The reference made, here and earlier, to the usual nearness of 
Longfellow and Emerson at table, is interesting, for one wonders 
that this seldom happened elsewhere. Their homes were but 
thirteen miles apart by the turnpike. But at first the two poets 
faced east and west. Longfellow, born on the edge of the great 
pine forest, in his eager youth sailed for the Old World. Her 
beauty and her story won his love, held most of his allegiance for 
life. Her ancient culture, her ripeness and smoothness even in her 
ruins, her veiling and colouring atmosphere still haunted him. 
His constant studies through his professorship, always continued, 
sustained this influence. But Emerson had hastened home from 
his first visit to Europe to live close to the pine trees, and daily 
listen and record their song 

Of tendency through endless ages, 
Of star-dust and star-pilgrimages. 

At that period he felt the need of a Bardic improvisation of the 

instant thought, — 

The undersong, 
The ever old, the ever young. 

Later, with more sensitive ear, he kept the verses by him till they 
mellowed. So the two poets worshipping the goddess, but from 
different sides, were not quite drawn, one to another. Yet each 
valued the other as a man standing for beauty, but also for right 
in troublous times. Longfellow's mention of Emerson is always 
kindly. In the autumn of 1845, returning from the introductory 
lecture in Emerson's course on "Great Men," he wrote, "Not so 
much as usual of the 'sweet rhetoricke' which usually falls from 
his lips, and many things to shock the sensitive ear and heart." He 



i^S6 



27 



spoke well of the lecture on "Goethe," adding, "There Is a great 
charm about him — the Chrysostom and Sir Thomas Browne of 
the day." In 1849, delighted with the lecture "Inspiration," he 
likened Emerson to a temple portico: "We stand expectant, wait- 
ing for the High Priest to come forth." A gentle wind coming from 
it moves the blossoms, then down the green fields the grasses bend, 
"and we ask, 'When will the High Priest come forth and reveal to 
us the truth?' and the disciples say, 'He has already gone forth 
and Is yonder In the meadows.' 'And the truth he was to reveal?' 
*It Is Nature, nothing more.'" 

^ In May of the same year, Emerson thanked Longfellow for the 
gift of his "Kavanagh," saying: "It had, with all Its gifts and 
graces, the property of persuasion, and of inducing the severe 
mood it required. ... I think it the best sketch we have seen in 
the direction of the American novel. . . . One thing struck me as I 
read, — that you win our gratitude too easily; for after our much 
experience of the squalor of New Hampshire and the pallor of 
Unltarianism, we are so charmed with elegance in an American 
book that we could forgive more vices than are possible to you." 
Hawthorne wrote at the same time : — 

"It is a most precious and rare book, as fragrant as a bunch of 
flowers, and as simple as one flower. A true picture of life, more- 
over." Emerson, In the later days of the wishing for the Club, 
before Its birth, writing to Longfellow, to thank him for the gift 
of his "Poems," adds: "I hope much In these days from Ward's 
cherished project of a club that shall be a club. It seems to offer 
me the only chance I dare trust of coming near enough to you 
to talk, one of these days, of poetry, of which, when I read your 
verses, I think I have something to say to you. So you must 
befriend his good plan. And here Is a token: I send you my new 
book; and will not have any sign that you have received it until 
the first club-meeting." 

In the letters from Emerson it is interesting to note that they 
relate to Longfellow's American, not Old- World themes. Thus he 
welcomes the gift of "Hiawatha": "I have always one foremost 
satisfaction in reading your books, — that I am safe. I am, in va- 
riously skilful hands, but first of all they are safe hands. However, 



2 8 "The Saturday Club 

I find this Indian poem . . . sweet and wholesome as maize; very 
proper and pertinent for us to read, and showing a kind of manly 
sense of duty in the poet to write. ... I found in the last cantos a 
pure gleam or two of blue sky, and learned thence to tax the rest 
of the poem as being too abstemious." 

All through Longfellow's journal, from his first coming to Cam- 
bridge, his love and honour for Charles Sumner appear, and en- 
dured to the end. Longfellow received him at his home like a 
brother before his entry into political life. After he went to Wash- 
ington, long and afi"ectionate letters constantly passed between 
them. Longfellow was happy and proud of his friend's broad 
statesmanship, and high courage in a cause, even in the North 
but slowly gaining strength, disregarding constant danger. Had 
Sumner lived in Boston, he would almost surely have been in- 
cluded among the early members of the Club. 

And now, in the May following its gathering, a dastard's as- 
sault on Sumner, writing at his desk in the Senate Chamber, — well 
nigh a murder, — stirred the members, most of whom were, then, 
his new friends, very deeply. Longfellow, in his journal, fairly 
moans in his distress and anxiety. But he thankfully tells of the 
reaction which this deed had instantly stirred in New England, 
and tells with great comfort of one instance. In the early days of 
their gathering in Cambridge, Felton, as well as he, had been a 
close and admiring friend of Sumner. But the slavery issue had 
divided them. Felton, in the pro-slavery Whig camp, blamed his 
old friend's frontal attacks with uncompromising eloquence on the 
defenders of slavery, North and South, and their relations were 
broken. But this outrage turned the tide. Longfellow gladly writes 
in his journal, May 24: *' Great excitement in town on this affair; 
and to-night a great meeting in Faneuil Hall. At dinner, — let me 
record it to his honour, — Felton, who has had a long quarrel with 
Sumner, proposed as a toast, 'The reelection of Charles Sumner.'" 
Next day, writing to Sumner of the shock and sorrow at what had 
befallen him, he says, "A brave and noble speech, you made; never 
to die out of the memories of men! . . . Ever, and never so much 
as now, yours." 



i856 



29 



And now to attempt some picturing of the Founders. Their 
kind faces, strong, quietly serious, or humorous or gay, some 
fortunate few of us can call up before the inward eye, and hear for 
a moment their far-off voices. Others, as youths, have known or 
seen some of them, and may retain dim pictures of them in their 
last days. Happily, good sun-pictures remain of all, and more or 
less successful paintings of some of them. 

The sketches of the gifts and characteristics of the first eleven 
who gathered, with important points in their history, are now 
given in alphabetical order, followed soon after by those of the 
three friends who joined them in 1857. 

Those chosen in 1858 and thereafter will be noticed in due order 
in the course of the narrative. 



LOUIS AGASSIZ 

Among the names by which the Club was referred to by outsiders 
when its fame began to spread was "Agassiz's Club." It might 
well have borne the name, for his beaming face, his expansive 
nature, many-sided knowledge, charmingly conveyed, his Swiss 
democracy and sincerity, and French aplomb, commanded the 
love and admiration of all the company, however differing in tem- 
perament or gifts. 

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, born at Mortier in French Swit- 
zerland east of Lake Neufchatel, with the sure instincts and 
impelling spirit of a great naturalist from boyhood, shunning all 
bypaths, neglecting all obstacles, even poverty, had, when all 
possible resources were exhausted, received, through Humboldt's 
kindly influence, a subsidy from the Prussian Government to ex- 
plore in America in 1846. Not long after his arrival. Sir Charles 
Lyell secured him the opportunity to give a course of lectures at 
the Lowell Institute. 

His own enthusiasm and charming taking for granted the in- 
terest in his remote subject of an audience all but absolutely igno- 
rant of advancing modern science, — his genial face, his interesting 
foreign accent, and his facile blackboard drawing, — won the game 
completely. Mollusks, radiates, and articulates hitherto unknown 
by fashionable ladies and gentlemen (except by a few presentable 
representatives, like oysters, starfish, and lobsters), his hearers, 
bewitched for an hour, found as interesting as historic characters. 
It was the same with country Lyceum audiences, and in mansion 
or cottage he won the hearts of his entertainers. Harvard College 
capitulated the next year. Agassiz was appointed Professor. It 
was a fateful moment, for in the presence of his broad views and 
compelling influence it could not long continue as the humble and 
limited college which it had been for two hundred years. It used 
to be said that the government of the College rather regarded the 
Scientific and Medical Schools as an impertinence. Agassiz pre- 
sented the idea that the Undergraduate Department was prepara- 



Louis Agassiz 3 1 

tory, and the Schools, professional and scientific, the real thing. 
Within twenty years the College, under a young and fearless Presi- 
dent, well seconded by the more eager spirits in the Faculty, 
began its new vigorous growth, to become indeed a University. 

In Mr. Emerson's journal in the late autumn of 1852 is re- 
corded : — 

"I saw in the cars a broad-featured, unctuous man, fat and 
plenteous as some successful politician, and pretty soon divined 
it must be the foreign professor who has had so marked a success 
in all our scientific and social circles, having established unques- 
tionable leadership in them all; and it was Agassiz." 

Longfellow records having felt Agassiz's genial charm at one 
of their first meetings: — 

" February 3 rd, 1 847. Dinner-party (at Mr. Nathan Appleton's) 
for Agassiz. . . . The recollection of the pleasant dinner is charm- 
ing. Agassiz lounging in his chair or pricking up his ears, eagerly 
listening to what was said. . . . From our end of the table I heard 
Agassiz extolling my description of the glacier of the Rhone in 
Hyperion^ which is pleasant in the mouth of a Swiss who has a 
glacier theory of his own." 

Dr. James Kendall Hosmer, for many years Professor in Wash- 
ington University of St. Louis, a classmate and friend of the 
younger Agassiz (H.U. 1855), in an admirable book of reminis- 
cences ^ thus describes the father: — 

"He had come a few years before from Europe, a man in his 
prime, of great fame. He was strikingly handsome, with a dome- 
like head under flowing black locks, large, dark, mobile eyes set 
in features strong and comely, and with a well-proportioned stal- 
wart frame. At the moment his prestige was greater, perhaps, than 
that of any other Harvard professor. His knowledge seemed 
almost boundless. His glacial theory had put him among the geo- 
logical chiefs, and, as to animated nature, he had ordered and sys- 
tematized, from the lowest plant forms up to the crown and crea- 
tion, the human being. Abroad we knew he was held to be an 
adept in the most difficult fields, and now in his new environment 
he was pushing his investigations with passionate zeal. But the 

^ The Last Leaf, by James K. Hosmer, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. 



3 2 "The Saturday Club 

boys found in him points on which a laugh could be hung. As he 
strode homeward from his walks in the outer fields or marshes, 
we eyed him gingerly, for who could tell what he might have in 
his pockets? . . . 

"He was on friendliest terms with things Ill-reputed, even ab- 
horrent, and could not understand the qualms of the delicate. He 
was said to have held up once, in all innocence, before a class of 
school-girls a wriggling snake. The shrieks and confusion brought 
him to a sense of what he had done. He apologized elaborately, 
the foreign peculiarity he never lost running through his confusion. 
'Poor girls, I vIU not do it again. Next time I vill bring in a nice, 
clean leetle feesh.' Agassiz took no pleasure In shocking his class; 
on the contrary, he was most anxious to engage and hold them. . . . 
He sought no title but that of teacher. To do anything else was 
only to misuse his gift. In his desk he was an inspirer, but hardly 
more so than in private talk. . . . He was charmingly affable, 
encouraging our questions, and unwearied in his demonstrations. 
When his audience was made up from people of the simplest, 
... he exerted his powers as generously as when addressing a 
company of savants. He always kindled as he spoke, and with 
a marvellous magnetism communicated his glow to those who 
listened. "^ 

"I have seen him stand before his class holding in his hand the 
claw of a crustacean. In his earnestness it seemed to be for him 
the centre of the creation, and he made us all share his belief. 
Indeed, he convinced us. Running back from it in an almost 
infinite series was the many-ordered life adhering, at last scarcely 
distinguishable from the inorganic matter to which it clung. 
Forward from it again ran the series not less long and complicated, 
which fulfilled itself at last In the brain and soul of man. What he 
held in his hand was a central link. His colour came and went, 
his eyes danced and his tones grew deep and tremulous, as he dwelt 
on the illimitable chain of being. With a few strokes on the black- 
board, he presented graphically the most intricate variations. He 
felt the sublimity of what he was contemplating, and we glowed 
with him from the contagion of his fervour." 

John T. Morse writes, "Dr. Holmes had a great admiration for 



Louis Agassiz 3 3 

Professor Agassiz, and used to called him *Liebig's Extract' of the 
wisdom of ages"; and added, "I cannot help thinking what a feast 
the cannibals would have, if they boiled such an extract." A 
gentleman once commented very unfavourably upon this little 
jest, explaining with more than British gravity, that it was a poor 
one, because cannibals don't care for wisdom, and would only 
have relished Agassiz because he was plump! ^ 

Francis H. Underwood wrote: "A warm friendship sprang up 
between Agassiz and Longfellow. They were attracted by similar 
tastes and by common cosmopolitan culture. There was in the 
Swiss-Frenchman a breezier manner and more effervescence of 
humour: in the American more attention to the minor amenities 
and social forms; but they agreed heartily, and they loved each 
other like David and Jonathan. Their diverse occupations estab- 
lished a pleasing and restful counterpoise. Longfellow would often 
take a look through the microscope in Agassiz's laboratory when 
at Nahant, where they were neighbours. Agassiz, in his turn, en- 
joyed no recreation so much as an hour in Longfellow's study 
where the talk was of poetry and other literary topics." Mr. 
Underwood goes on with a statement, remarkable but true, as 
to the change in the College from Puritan tradition and usage 
brought by the leaven of Agassiz. "He affected the Faculty as 
well as the students, and the people as well as the savants. It is dif- 
ficult to show the full significance of the change before mentioned. 
One feature was the gradual secularization of the University. A 
century ago, a college professor was invariably 'the Reverend' 
So-and-So. A clergyman, to be sure, may be also a chemist, as- 
tronomer, or philologist, but the knowledge of theology is not a 
prerequisite for the work of the laboratory or lecture-stand. And 
the most devout reader will probably admit that a faculty like 
that at Harvard, numbering near a hundred, composed of men ab- 
solutely first in their respective studies, is able to exert an influ- 
ence upon the large body of undergraduates which no purely 
clerical circle could hope to equal. Truth, as well as light, has been 
polarized in our times." . . . 

A year or more before the formation of the Club, Mr. Agassiz 
had established a private school for girls in Cambridge, to help 



34 The Saturday Club 

him in funds for his collections for the Museum. His son and 
daughter were his admirable helpers in the school. A lady who was 
one of the scholars says: "Mr. Agassiz gave us lectures on geology 
and zoology. All the girls liked to hear him. Whether or no we 
had special interest in his subjects, we found his lectures delight- 
ful. He was so poetical, so grand, so reverent. To all of us he 
was always friendly and cordial." As Emerson said of him, "He 
made anatomy popular hy the aid of an idea.'' 

Rev. Edward Chipman Guild, the Unitarian Minister of Wal- 
tham, said in his later years: "I have always wanted to see some 
record of the actual effect of the influence of Agassiz upon his 
pupils. I believe it would be found that it extended into walks of 
life where it would be very little expected. Habits of accuracy, of 
enthusiasm, and self-sacrifice in the pursuit of knowledge, systema- 
tic ways of arranging things in the mind . . . are of value in any 
position or career. I believe that Agassiz's men might be traced 
by definite signs — in the war, in politics, in the ministry, the 
law, medicine, manufacture; and I am prepared to believe that, if 
1 were to return to Waltham ten years hence, I should find a dif- 
ference in those households where the wife and mother had been 
in the botany class, easily distinguishing them from any others." 

For Agassiz's method was new; often disconcerting to his stu- 
dents. They came expecting information; that he would tell them 
facts, and illustrate them on the specimens in the Museum, and 
these they were to commit to memory. But Agassiz gave the 
youth a specimen; he was to observe it. First, and mainly, he 
must learn a new art, — to see, and then to see more, then to com- 
pare, and then think why. 

Agassiz enjoyed the Club and was the life of his end of the table, 
where he presided. Highly vitalized, quick-witted, full of interest- 
ing matter, affectionate and kindly, he was in the best, and proper, 
sense convivial, good to live with. 

Emerson, always on the alert for facts and laws in Nature, 
which for him were guiding symbols, delighted in this new friend. 
Agassiz loved to impart them, perhaps the more to Emerson for 
this very trait, for this Swiss student of Natural History had, 



Louis Agassiz 35 

at the University of Munich, attended for four years Schelling's 
lectures on the relation of the Real and the Ideal. Emerson wrote 
in his journal: "Agassiz is a man to be thankful for; always cordial, 
full of facts, with unsleeping observation, and perfectly communi- 
cative. . . . What a harness of buckram, city life and wealth puts 
on our poets and literary men. . . . Agassiz is perfectly accessible; 
has a brave manliness which can meet a peasant, a mechanic, or 
a fine gentleman with equal fitness." 

By these qualities this foreigner performed what in those days, 
might almost have been deemed a miracle; his personality and 
earnest eloquence persuaded the farmers, manufacturers, shop- 
keepers, and lawyers of the General Court of Massachusetts to ap- 
propriate the hundred thousand dollars for his Museum of Na- 
tural History. Yet there were brave opponents. The utilitarian 
Puritan was there. To quote from memory the Daily Advertiser' s 
report of a debate, — one legislator defiantly asked why should 
such things be, — "What has Agassiz with his pickled periwinkles 
and polypuses done that Is really useful?" Instantly a liberal 
member arose and said, "The religious world owes him a debt of 
gratitude for triumphantly combating that new-fangled and 
monstrous teaching that we are descended from monkeys," — 
but here the first speaker countered by crying out, " I thank God 
that I have only to go to His word, — not to any French professor 
of Atheism, — for that!" 

But Agassiz was religious. He had found in the Alps, in the Ap- 
palachians, and In the Florida reef God's writing, telling to who- 
soever could read it the age of the world, and the record through 
aeons, of progressive life on its surface and in its depths, so authen- 
tically that he could afford to neglect the recent poem of Genesis. 
But the marks of design, as he read them throughout Nature, 
stirred him to an enthusiasm which was worship, and to his 
hearers he bore witness of a degree of living faith that would be 
a comfort to many ministers, could they but feel it. 

And Agassiz was no foreigner. He was by his expansive nature 
a citizen of the world, like Humboldt, who recognized his young 
genius and sent him to us in 1846. 

When as a boy-student at the University of Munich, Agassiz, 



3 6 'The Saturday Club 

with his friend DInkel, a young artist, watched groups of their 
fellows start on "empty pleasure trips," Agassiz said: "There 
they go — their motto is — ' Ich gehe mit den andern'; — I will 
go my own way, Mr. Dinkel, and not alone. I will be a leader of 
others." 

To quote the words of the London Quarterly Review: "Unex- 
pected events rendered it possible for him to promote that eman- 
cipation of 'that splendid adolescent,' a nation passing from child- 
hood to maturity with the faults of spoiled children, and yet with 
the nobility of character and the enthusiasm of youth. The wild 
year of 1848 broke the ties which bound the Canton of Neufchatel 
to the Prussian monarchy, and consequently the Neufchatelois 
Agassiz found himself honourably set free from the service of the 
Prussian king." The Chair of Natural History in the Lawrence 
Scientific School with a salary of $1500 was offered him, with 
much liberty. This seasonable offer was accepted. As soon as the 
term was over he went with his students to the Lake Superior 
region, and in succeeding vacation time from the Lakes to the Gulf 
on scientific tours, lecturing to the people and becoming acquainted 
with them by the way, everywhere arousing interest in science, 
and regard for himself. Early in his stay here, his wife, a refined 
and serious person, but long an invalid, died in Switzerland. He 
had brought Alexander with him to America. 

In 1850, Agassiz married Elizabeth Cary, a woman of great 
charm and a fitting mate for him. She made a happy home for 
him and Alexander, and the two daughters, who were at once 
brought from Switzerland. Mrs. Agassiz, moreover, helped on 
her husband's project for a school, that he might earn money for 
his Museum, and she took an interest in all his work, doing a great 
part of his writing, and gallantly accompanying him, even on his 
deep-sea dredging expeditions. At first they lived on Oxford Street 
in Cambridge, but later on Quincy Street. Here he had for neigh- 
bours his intimate friends Felton and Peirce, associates in the 
College as in the Club. 
. Mr. Howells, in his Literary Friends^ wrote : — 

"Agassiz, of course, was Swiss and Latin, and not Teutonic, but 
he was of the Continental European civilization, and was widely 



Louis Agassiz 3 7 

different from the other Cambridge men in everything but love 
of the place. 'He is always an Europaer,' said Lowell one day, 
in distinguishing concerning him; and for any one who had tasted 
the flavour of the life beyond the ocean and the channel, this had 
its charm. Yet he was extremely fond of his adopted compatriots, 
and no alien born had a truer or tenderer sense of New England 
character. I have an idea that no one else of his day could have 
got so much money for science out of the General Court of Mass- 
achusetts; and I have heard him speak with the wisest and warm- 
est appreciation of the hard material from which he was able to 
extract this treasure. The legislators who voted appropriations 
for his Museum and his other scientific objects were not usually 
lawyers or professional men, with the perspectives of a liberal edu- 
cation, but were hard-fisted farmers who had a grip of the State's 
money as if it were their own, and yet gave it with intelligent 
munificence. They understood that he did not want it for him- 
self, and had no interested aim in getting it; they knew that, as he 
once said, he had no time to make money, and wished to use it 
solely for the advancement of learning; and with this understand- 
ing they were ready to help him generously. 

"... Longfellow told me how, after the doctors had condemned 
Agassiz to inaction, on account of his failing health, he had 
broken down in his friend's study, and wept like an Europaer, and 
lamented, 'I shall never finish my work' ..." 

Howells continues: "Mrs. Agassiz has put into her interesting 
Llje of him, a delightful story which she told me about him. He 
came to her beaming one day, and demanded, 'You know I have 
always held such and such an opinion about a certain group of 

fossil fishes.?' 'Yes, yes!' 'Well, I have just been reading 's 

new book, and he has shown me that there is n't the least truth 
in my theory'; and he burst into a laugh of unalloyed pleasure in 
relinquishing his error. . . ." 

Howells recalls "a dinner at his house to Mr. Bret Harte, when 
the poet came on from California, and Agassiz approached him 
over the coffee through their mutual scientific interest in the last 
meeting of the geological 'Society upon the Stanislow.' He 
quoted to the author some passages from the poem recording the 



3 8 "The Saturday Club 

final proceedings of this body, which had particularly pleased him, 
and I think Mr. Harte was as much amused at finding himself 
thus in touch with the savant^ as Agassiz could ever have been 
with that delicious poem." 

To show the joy of this free Swiss mountaineer in life in our 
Republic and — as a great master in science — its vast field, we 
only need to record his action when the French Emperor sent him 
the offer of the chair of Palaeontology in the Museum of Natural 
History at Paris. Agassiz wrote to his friend M. Martens: "The 
work I have undertaken here, and the confidence shown in me . . . 
make my return to Europe impossible for the present. . . . Were 
I offered absolute power for the reorganization of the Jardin des 
Plantes, with a revenue of fifty thousand francs, I would not 
accept it. I like my independence better." 

And so, though the world was Agassiz's home, and he made 
long and fruitful excursions from his base here, his hearthstone 
was in Cambridge. There he died, — his Museum his monument. 

E. W. E. 



RICHARD HENRY DANA, JR. 

Proceeding in alphabetical order, next comes a born gentleman, 
eminently so in the old sense of the word; happily so in the full 
sense. 

Richard H. Dana, Jr., born in Cambridge in 1815, came, as 
he always remembered, sixth in a line of American Danas there, 
active and true men, especially in law and public service, in fair 
or in stormy times. Dana's father, however, was devoted to 
letters, yet a good citizen, and later than his son he was chosen 
into the Club. 

The elder Dana wrote of Richard when but ten years old: "He 
is a boy of excellent principles even now. I 'm afraid he is too sen- 
sitive for his own happiness; yet he is generally cheerful and ready 
for play, and is a boy of true spirit." He might well say so, for 
no young Spartan could have shown more courage under the cruel 
beatings in one school, and the ascetic discipline of the next, both 
tolerated by parents in those days as according to barbarous 
English tradition. At the age of eleven Richard was one of twenty 
boys taught for less than a year, in Cambridge, by his future club- 
mate Emerson. Of this school, Dana wrote: "A very pleasant 
instructor we had in Mr. E., although he had not system or dis- 
cipline enough to ensure regular and vigorous study. I have al- 
ways considered it fortunate for us that we fell into the hands of 
more systematic and strict teachers, though not so popular with 
us, nor perhaps so elevated in their habits of thought as Mr. E.'* 
After this the boy was more fortunate than in his earlier experi- 
ences, ii} the school where he was prepared for college. 

As every one knows, the failure of young Dana's eyes in his 
junior year at Harvard led him to hazard the rude remedy of a 
common seaman's life, "round the Horn," on a trading vessel 
to the seldom visited northern Pacific coast. It was an inspiration. 
Not only did it cure his eyes, but it opened them to the lot, which 
he shared, and to the point of view, of men humble, tolling, ex- 
posed, and often abused; it softened him to human beings, and 



40 The Saturday Club 

hardened to danger. Born brave, he was also born unusually 
aristocratic, and the full dose of his two years' life as a sailor was 
needed as a corrective, and gave noble results through his after 
life. His book, a "by-product," quickly made him friends among 
high and low in both hemispheres. Its style was simple and strong. 
President Eliot, in whose five-foot book-shelf it holds a place, 
tells us that some one who bought that far-famed collection wrote 
to him, "That one book is worth the price of the whole." 

After graduating at Harvard in 1837, and at the Law School in 
1839, he began the practice of law. He wrote a book, The Sea- 
man's Friend, a manual of sea laws and usages. As a result of his 
youthful adventure, admiralty cases came to him with increasing 
frequency, and soon sailors in trouble found in Dana a valuable 
friend. But soon a yet more helpless and abused class moved his 
indignant pity in their cause. Scorning the truckling to the South 
of the "Cotton Whigs," Dana, a "Conscience Whig," became an 
active Free-Soiler in 1852. Two years later, when most of Boston's 
aristocracy, at their idol Webster's word, joined with her lowest 
elements, approved and aided the enforcement of the law which 
made them "the jackals of the slave-holder," the high-spirited 
Dana did his best intelligently and valiantly to save poor refugees 
from being sent back to slavery, but in vain. Going home from 
the Court-House he was struck down with a club by a hired ruf- 
fian. A politician wrote to Dana, surprised that he, a conserva- 
tive, should join the Free-Soilers. In his answer he said: "There 
is a compound of selfishness and cowardice which often takes to 
itself the honored name of Conservatism . . . making material 
prosperity and ease its pole-star, will do nothing and risk 
nothing for a moral principle. But not so conservatism. Conser- 
vatism sometimes requires a risking or sacrificing of material ad- 
vantages. ... In a case for liberal, comprehensive justice to 
others, with only a remote and chiefly moral advantage to our- 
selves, to be done at the peril of our Immediate personal advan- 
tages, conservatism is more reliable than radicalism." 

Again: "I am a Free-Soiler, because I am (who should not say 
so) of the stock of the old Northern gentry, and have a particular 
dislike to any subserviency or even appearance of subserviency 




lf)^(A'%.'^(^u^cJi 



Richard Henry Dana^ jfr. 4^ 

on the part of our people to the slave-holding oligarchy. I was dis- 
gusted with it in College, at the Law School, and have been, since, 
in society and politics. The spindles and day-books are against 
us just now, for Free-Soilism goes to the wrong side of the ledger. 
The blood, the letters, and the plough are our chief reliance. . . . 
I am a 'Free-Soiler' and nothing else. A technical Abolitionist I 
am not." '^ 

Such fearless Free-Soilers, among persons who had the entry of 
the fashionable drawing-rooms of Boston, as Dana and Sumner, 
were soon made to feel the contempt there felt for the cause they 
championed, and they presently ceased to visit the homes of 
former friends, now cool. The Kansas outrages soon began to turn 
the tide, however, (later reenforced by the overwhelming war-wave) 
but, though Dana had held himself superior to social neglect, his 
invitation in 1856 to join the men who were forming the Saturday 
Club was highly gratifying. About this time young Adams came 
to study law in Dana's office. It is interesting to see how Dana's 
unhesitating choice of the brave part, with no heed to the sacri- 
fice, moved in remembrance and warmed the style of an author 
usually cool and even blunt. After forty years, Adams wrote of 
Dana in his defence of the fugitives: — "His connection with those 
cases was the one great professional and political act of his life. 
It was simply superb. There is nothing fairer or nobler in the long, 
rich archives of the law; and the man who holds that record in 
his hand may stand with head erect at the bar of that final judg- 
ment itself." 

Dana's head and heart were too high to consider for a moment 
social slights, actual or possible, in running his course, but it cost 
him much professionally. Adams says: "Nearly all the wealth 
and moneyed institutions of Boston were controlled by the con- 
servatives. . . . The ship-owners and merchants were Whigs 
almost to a man. . , . Dana's political course between 1848 and 
i860 not only retarded his professional advancement, but seri- 
ously impaired his income. It kept the rich clients from his office. 
He was the counsel of the sailor and the slave, — persistent, cou- 
rageous, hard-fighting, skilful, but still the advocate of the poor 
and the unpopular. In the mind of wealthy and respectable Boston 



42 The Saturday Club 

almost any one was to be preferred to him, — The Free-Soil 
lawyer, the counsel for the fugitive slave, alert, indomitable, al- 
ways on hand." 

"The spirit of liberty and also of equal rights of men before the 
law were so wrought into the fabric of his character," says Bishop 
Lawrence, "that his soul was afire at any invasion of this prin- 
ciple. When, therefore, a despised black man was about to be car- 
ried into bondage, Mr. Dana stood by his side in his defence as 
naturally as if he had sprung to the defence of his own brother. 
Again, in his law practice the question of the amount involved 
or the fee to be received had no interest for him; his sense of duty 
was such that he never failed to serve the humblest with the best 
of his time and thought." Dana desired and foresaw the coming of 
that system of international comity and justice that now, it 
seems, must surely come. 

The entry already quoted from Mr. Dana's diary of 1855 shows 
that he had been, by invitation, one of the Saturday diners in the 
formative period of the Club. Of his membership Mr. Adams 
wrote with characteristic plain speech: "Through what affiliation 
Dana became one of the company does not appear. There was 
certainly no particular sympathy, intellectual or otherwise, be- 
tween himself and his ancient instructor at Cambridge, now be- 
come, to quote Dana's own words, 'a writer and lecturer upon 
what is called the transcendental philosophy,' — a philosophy 
Dana unquestionably never took the trouble even to try to under- 
stand . . ." Adams continues: "Judge Hoar and Mr. Dana were, 
with the exception of Woodman, the only lawyers in the company, 
and Judge Hoar was a fellow townsman and neighbour of Emer- 
son's; the probabilities are, therefore, that it was through Hoar and 
Woodman that Dana, with whose literary and social qualities they 
were well acquainted, became one of the little Emerson coterie." 
But It must be remembered that Lowell spoke of Dana as one 
of his earliest friends. 

Adams says: "Dana did not express himself too strongly when 
he wrote in his diary that the Saturday Club had 'become an im- 
portant and much valued thing' to him. In fact, It supplied a need 
in his life, for it not only gratified to a certain extent his social 



Richard Henry Dana^ yr. 43 

cravings, which found little enough to gratify them elsewhere in 
the routine of his working Hfe, but it also brought him in regular 
contact with men whom he otherwise would have rarely met, — 
men like Agassiz, Emerson, Lowell, and Holmes, who gave to the 
Club dinners that intellectual and literary flavour which Dana ap- 
preciated so much, and in professional life seldom enjoyed." 

Long afterwards, in referring to Dana in this connection. Judge 
Hoar wrote: "He was a pretty constant attendant at the dinners, 
and evidently had a profound respect for them as an institution. 
He always struck me 'as made for state occasions and great cere- 
monials.' He did not usually take a leading part in the conversa- 
tion, unless some matter of politics or history, English or Amer- 
ican, was under consideration; and in the rapid flow of wit and 
wisdom which Lowell and Holmes and Whipple and Agassiz and 
Felton would keep up, he was not often a contributor. He told a 
story very well, when he chose; but was a little formal about it, 
though he had some powers of mimicry; and in personal discus- 
sions he had a keen perception of salient points of character, with 
a hearty detestation of meanness or baseness — and about as 
much for vulgarity, as rated by his standard. He was not given 
to repartee, and seemed to prefer more methodical and elabo- 
rate discourse. There was a certain Episcopal flavour about his 
manners and speech, and way of regarding other people, that 
matched oddly with his thorough democracy concerning human 
rights. He had an imagination kindred to Burke's in splendour, 
but regarded facts, where they presumed to stand in the way of 
theories, with suspicion, if not with disapproval." 

Mr. Norton, like the Judge, spoke of Mr. Dana as "a capital 
narrator with a vast store of anecdotes. He had a story he liked 
to tell when there were New Yorkers present as guests. Dana 
used occasionally to slip in to hear the services at a negro church on 
Bowdoin Street. The sexton knew him well and one morning 
when he appeared, said: 'Good mornin', Mr. Dana, I would n't 
advise yer to go inter de church to-day.' 'But why not?' 'Well, 
yer see, sah, there's a New York preacher, not a man of talents, 
— New York man, you see, sah.'" 

Dana cared for the ancient classics and appreciated their 



44 T'he Saturday Club 

influence in the education of modern youth. Shakspeare, Milton, 
Spencer, Bacon, he enjoyed in his father's Hbrary and always 
reverted to. Keble's Christian Year was his vade mecum^ and, in 
his English trip, his visit to Keble's home and church was his 
happiest experience. For contemporary writers, especially Ameri- 
cans, he seems to have cared less. He especially abhorred Dar- 
winism, and the godlessness that he found in the scientific theo- 
ries of later investigators. Agassiz's religious feeling and struggle 
against Darwin must have been a comfort to him. 

Dana's idea of a gentleman is quoted by Adams as a reason 
why he enjoyed the Club: "Plain in their dress, simple in their 
manners, the question whether they are doing the right thing — 
fomwf i7/<2w/, whether this or that is genteel or not — never seems 
to occur to them, or to have any place in their minds. There is a 
freedom of true gentility, as well as of true Christianity, while 
many men aim at the mark by striving to do the deeds of the law, 
not having the guide within, and are all their lifetime suffering 
bondage." 

Mr. Dana's integrity, courage, culture, knowledge of affairs, 
and his patriotism might seem to have fitted him for high places, 
and to these he aspired. Unhappily, he apparently had un- 
consciously a native disqualification — incurable. This was a 
certain repellent mannerism, behind which lay want of tact. 
With his love for England there seems to have remained in him, 
with all the virtues, through six generations, a certain want of per- 
ception sometimes noticed in her sons. "His proper place," says 
his biographer, "was at the bar. . . . Had he adhered to his pro- 
fession, he not improbably would at last have attained, had he so 
desired, that foremost place in the judiciary of Massachusetts 
once held by his grandfather. But, with a pronounced taste for 
political life, Dana had, unfortunately, no political faculty. . . . 
Under certain circumstances he might have been an eminent 
statesman, but under no circumstances could he ever have been 
a successful politician." And yet, during the Civil War and Re- 
construction periods, he gave clear opinions on important subjects 
to the President, and to his friends and club-mates, Adams, the 
Minister to Great Britain, and Senator Sumner. 



Richard Henry Dana^ yr. 45 

Dana's humanity recoiled from the cruel doctrines of the 
Orthodox Church of New England into which he was born — 
*'born," he could not believe, "under Thy wrath," though this 
phrase was in the Book of Common Prayer which he later used. 
Also his temperament, as Bishop Lawrence puts it, "liked back- 
ground" in his church, as In his family history. He found rest 
and comfort in the arms of the Episcopal Church. 

President Eliot pays this compliment to the memory of Mr. 
Dana, "He was interested in everything pertaining to the well- 
being of the human race." 

Mr. Perry calls attention to the allurements that new countries 
in their maiden beauty, and old lands In their purple atmosphere 
of historic charm, held out to Mr. Dana. In middle life, and again, 
years later, he expressed In letters how great was this temptation. 
As Mr. Perry says, "of an essentially romantic temperament, he 
was forced by external circumstances to compete with persons 
who (as he said) 'never walk but in one line from their cradle to 
their grave.'" Dana steadily walked the line of duty, but happily 
had fullest happiness In one or two journeys afar, and, shortly 
before his death, described his sojourn at Castellamare as "a 
dream" of life. 

E. W. E. 



JOHN SULLIVAN DWIGHT 

When Lowell wrote "The Fable for Critics" In 1848, he coupled 
in the happiest fashion the names of Nathaniel Hawthorne and 
John Sullivan Dwight. Nature, according to Lowell, had used some 
woman-stuff in shaping Hawthorne: — 

"The success of her scheme gave her so much delight 
That she tried it again, shortly after, in Dwight: 
Only, while she was kneading and shaping the clay, 
She sang to her work in her sweet, childish way, 
And found, when she 'd put the last touch to his soul, 
That the music had somehow got mixed with the whole." 

Dwight was only thirty-five when these lines were written, but 
they indicate, with delicate grace, the characteristics that domi- 
nated his long life. A born lover of music, he gave himself Instinc- 
tively to the task of serving this art in the community. As critic, 
journalist, and organizer of musical associations he performed a 
matchless service to his native city and to the interests of music 
throughout America. Without technical training or adequate pro- 
fessional knowledge, without financial resources or much practi- 
cal worldly wisdom, Dwight succeeded In his high aim by the sole 
force of a pure unworldly enthusiasm for the beautiful. An origi- 
nal member of the Saturday Club, and surviving, together with 
Holmes, Lowell and Judge Hoar of the original members, to be- 
come one of its incorporators in 1886, Dwight has the unique and 
rather odd distinction of being the only man in the Club who has 
ever represented primarily the art of music, — as Rowse and 
Hunt have been our only painters and Story our single sculptor. 
There are many testimonies to Dwight's fidelity to the Saturday 
Club and to his unfailing attendance upon its dinners. Our asso- 
ciate, Mr. Howells, in writing of his early recollections of the Club, 
notes that "John Dwight, the musical critic, and a nature most 
musically sweet, was always smilingly present." 

He was the son of Dr. John Dwight of Boston. The father had 
studied first for the ministry and then turned to medicine, and 



yohn Sullivan Dwight ^7 

Is rdfnembered as a radical free-thinker. The son was born in 
Court Street, in May, 1813, went to the Latin School, and car- 
ried to Harvard more Latin and Greek, he thought, than he brought 
away. His chief interests lay already in music and poetry. He 
was chosen poet by his class of 1832, a class that had among its 
members Dwight's lifelong friends Estes Howe, John Holmes, and 
Charles T. Brooks. Then he drifted into the Divinity School, 
where he and C. P. Cranch used to play duets until their out- 
raged friend, Theodore Parker, who disliked music, was driven 
in self-defence to saw wood outside their door. George Willis 
Cooke, whose excellent Life of Dwight preserves this anecdote, 
prints also an interesting correspondence between Parker and 
Dwight in 1837. The latter had been graduated from the Divinity 
School in 1836, but not succeeding in finding a pulpit, he asked 
Parker to point out his faults, — a service for which Theodore 
Parker was always well fitted. "You surround yourself with the 
perfumed clouds of music," he wrote. "You are deficient in will. 
. . . You have done fine things, but they are nothing to what you 
can and ought to do." It appears from the correspondence, how- 
ever, that Dwight had already been Invited to enumerate Parker's 
faults, and his judgment upon that wood-sawing son of thunder 
illuminates for us his own gentle soul. "I don't like to see a man 
have too much will," he writes: "it mars the beauty of nature. 
You seem, as the phrenologist said, 'goaded on.' Your life seems 
a succession of convulsive efi"orts, and the only wonder is to me 
that they don't exhaust you. . . . Coupled with your high ideal 
is an impotent wish to see it immediately realized, — two things 
which don't go well together; for the one prompts you to love, 
the other, soured by necessary disappointment, prompts to hate, 
at least contempt. I think your love of learning is a passion, that 
it injures your mind by converting insensibly what is originally a 
pure thirst for truth into a greedy, avaricious, jealous striving, not 
merely to know, but to get all there is to be known. . . . Have 
you not too much of a mania for all printed things, — as if books 
were the symbols of that truth to which the student aspires? You 
write, you read, you talk, you think, in a hurry, for fear of not 
getting all." 



4 8 T'he Saturday Club 

Mr. Emerson, always unwearied in his kindness toward young 
idealists of Dwight's type, arranged to have him supply the pul- 
pit in East Lexington, where he himself had been ministering. 
Dwight preached there intermittently in 1837 and 1838, but his 
sermons, hastily thrown together just before the service, failed to 
satisfy the congregation. He was immersed in German studies, 
in music, and in miscellaneous literature. He wrote for the 
Christian Examiner in 1838 what is thought to be the earliest 
American review of Tennyson's poems, and published in that same 
year translations from Goethe and Schiller, with notes, for George 
Ripley's series of volumes entitled Specimens of Foreign Stand- 
ard Literature. This was ten years earlier than the translations 
of Dwight's friend Frederick Hedge. Carlyle praised Dwight's 
work with generous warmth: "I have heard from no English 
writer whatever as much truth as you write in these notes about 
Goethe." Finally, in May, 1839, the young minister without a 
pulpit was ordained pastor of the Unitarian Church in North- 
ampton. George Ripley preached the ordination sermon, and 
the great Dr. Channing gave the charge. This was on Wednes- 
day. But on Sunday morning Dwight woke with terror to re- 
member that neither of his two sermons were prepared. Never- 
theless, he "mysteriously got through" the ordeal, so he wrote, 
and In all probability the following Sunday morning found him 
as unprepared as ever. Miss Elizabeth Peabody wrote him kindly 
that "a certain want of fluency in prayer had been the real cause 
of your want of outward success" and she offered some useful 
hints for remedying the deficiency. But Dwight's professional dif- 
ficulties were soon more radical than Miss Peabody supposed, and 
the little parish took the initiative in releasing him from an un- 
congenial situation. He never sought another pulpit. 

The very first number of the Dial contained three contributions 
from Dwight: an essay on the "Religion of Beauty," originally 
used as a sermon, a poem entitled "Rest," and an article on the 
Boston "Concerts of the Past Winter," in which the young en- 
thusiast makes this interesting prediction, which was to find its 
fulfilment later through the generosity of another member of the 
Saturday Club: "This promises something. We could not but 



yohn Sullivan Dwight 49 

feel that the materials that evening collected might, if they could 
be kept together through the year, and induced to practise, form 
an orchestra worthy to execute the grand works of Haydn and 
Mozart. Orchestra and audience would improve together, and we 
might even hope to hear one day the 'Sinfonia Eroica' and the 
'Pastorale' of Beethoven." Dwight delivered addresses on mu- 
sic before the Harvard Musical Association and elsewhere, and 
in November, 1841, we find the "stickit minister" installed as 
teacher of music and Latin at Brook Farm. George Ripley, the 
leader of the Brook Farm movement, was Dwight's best friend, 
and had, as we have seen, preached his ordination sermon at 
Northampton. The famous experiment "to realize practical 
equality and mutual culture" in West Roxbury is too well known 
to be discussed here. It is enough to say that Dwight's idealism 
found in Brook Farm a wholly congenial atmosphere. As the di- 
rector of the community music and the trainer of the choir he 
was the originator of the Mass Clubs which did so much to create 
interest in the work of the great German composers. Beethoven 
and Mozart were his passions. He played both the piano and the 
flute, and was fond of dreamy improvisations. He wrote articles 
on music for Lowell's ill-starred Pioneer and for the Democratic 
Review. When the weekly Harbinger, published at Brook Farm, 
had succeeded the Dial SiS the latest organ of "the newness," 
Dwight was a constant contributor, and he thought seriously of 
following this periodical when it removed to New York. He lec- 
tured there on music, and Parke Godwin wrote that "if this city 
were not wholly given up to idolatry, it would have rushed in a 
body to hear such sound and beautiful doctrine." Evidently the 
rush did not take place. 

But it was a kindly fate that kept Dwight in his native city. 
After the financial failure of Brook Farm, he had charge of the 
music of Rev. W. H. Channing's "Religious Union of Associa- 
tionists." He had the good fortune to marry Miss Mary Bullard, 
one of the singers in his choir. Finally, in 1852, after years of 
hope deferred, he realized his dream of founding a journal de- 
voted to music. With the aid of the Harvard Musical Associa- 
tion, Dwight's Journal of Music began its career of nearly thirty 



50 The Saturday Club 

years. Its service to the cause of musical education in America 
is universally recognized to-day. It set high standards, made no 
compromise with the interests of publishers, and told the truth. 
Dwight was no lover of editorial drudgery, had the scantiest re- 
muneration, and lacked, no doubt, the technical training for his 
task; but in spite of every limitation in musical knowledge and 
in sympathy, he carried the Journal single-handed until the Oliver 
Ditson Company assumed the risks of publication in 1859, giving 
Dwight full control of the editorial policy. 

In the following year he made his only visit to Europe, a visit 
saddened by the death of his wife, whom he had been obliged to 
leave in Boston. His friends of the Saturday Club, and particu- 
larly Dr. Holmes, wrote him touching letters in his bereavement. 
His own letters home give pleasant glimpses of his friendships 
with Agassiz and Story, and his acquaintance with the Brown- 
ings and Hans Christian Andersen in Rome. After his year of 
travel, Dwight returned to the odd, lonely bachelor life which 
was his for the remainder of his days. Music remained the chief 
interest of his existence. The younger members of the musical 
profession in Boston became his loyal friends, and even overlooked 
his lukewarm enthusiasm for the more ambitious modern music 
as represented by Wagner; "so many big words," Dwight wrote, 
"which, by their enormous orchestration, crowded harmonies, 
sheer intensity of sound, and restless, swarming motion without 
progress, seem to seek to carry the listeners by storm, by a roaring 
whirlwind of sound, instead of going to the heart by the simpler 
and diviner way of 'the still small voice.'" 

Ultimately, as is inevitable, the younger generation parted com- 
pany with him, and took its own road. In September, 1881, was 
printed the last number of Dwight's Journal 0/ Music. A few 
sentences from the editor's valedictory tell the essential story: 
"There is no putting out of sight the fact that the great themes for 
discussion, criticism, literary exposition, and description, which 
inspired us in this journal's prime, the master works and meaning 
of the immortal ones, like Bach and Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, 
Schubert, and the rest, although they cannot be exhausted, yet 
inevitably lose the charm of novelty. . . . Lacking the genius 



yohn Sullivan Dwight 5 ^ 

to make the old seem new, we candidly confess that what now chal- 
lenges the world as new in music fails to stir us to the same depths 
of soul and feeling that the old masters did, and doubtless always 
will. Startling as the new composers are, and novel, curious, 
brilliant, beautiful at times, they do not bring us nearer heaven. 
We feel no inward call to the proclaiming of the new gospel. We 
have tried to do justice to these works as they have claimed our no- 
tice, and have omitted no intelligence of them which came within 
the limits of our columns; but we lack motive for entering their 
doubtful service, we are not ordained their prophet. . . . We have 
long realized that we were not made for the competitive, sharp 
enterprise of modern journalism. That turn of mind which looks 
at the ideal rather than the practical, and the native indolence of 
temperament which sometimes goes with it, have made our move- 
ments slow. Hurry who will, we rather wait and take our chance. 
The work which could not be done at leisure, and in disregard to 
all immediate effect, we have been too apt to feel was hardly 
worth the doing. To be the first in the field with an announce- 
ment or a criticism or an idea was no part of our ambition. How 
can one recognize competitors or enter into competition, and at 
the same time keep his eye upon the truth .f"' Those simple and 
pathetic words carry one's mind back to the divinity student 
whom Theodore Parker thought deficient in will, to the Brook 
Farmer who disbelieved in the competitive system. Doubtless the 
age had now left him behind, but for nearly fifty years Dwight's 
name and experience had been synonymous with the develop- 
ment of musical taste in Boston. 

Dr. Henry IngersoU Bowditch, in an address to the Harvard 
Musical Association on their semi-centennial celebration, after tell- 
ing of the anxiety which his enthralling love for music occasioned 
in his somewhat puritanical father, said: "Thus, gentlemen, I have 
sketched the trials of my youth; and I compare with them what 
occurs now. Music is not now necessarily or commonly connected 
with drunkenness. Music can be the delight of every family, 
for every child now learns music as a part of the primary educa- 
tion. Before closing, let me allude to two persons whose influence 
has been for the last quarter of a century leading up to this 



52 The Saturday Club 

blessed result. I allude to John S. Dwight, who, by his Journal 
of Music, and his very able and always generous criticism, has 
upheld the divine effect of music on the human mind and heart; 
and to Henry Lee Higginson, who, by his noble generosity, has 
sustained for so many years the Symphony Concerts, which have 
in reality educated the present generation to a high appreciation 
of all that is beautiful and noble in orchestral music." 

It was fitting that in Dwight's last years the Harvard Musical 
Association should give him a home in its own rooms. There at 
No. I West Cedar Street, his eightieth birthday was celebrated 
on May 13, 1893, and there was held his burial service in Septem- 
ber. Dr. Holmes, who was three years older, and was now the last 
survivor of the original members of the Club, attended the funeral. 

Other names upon the roll of the Saturday Club have had 
higher artistic honors than John S. Dwight, but none of them, 
not even Hawthorne or Longfellow, were more perfect repre- 
sentatives of the artistic temperament. The title of his first 
article in the Dial, "The Religion of Beauty," gives the keynote 
of his simple, unworldly idealism. He was a lover of beauty with- 
out the power to create, except that his rare gift of appreciation 
and enthusiasm diffused a sense of beauty throughout a whole 
community — and perhaps this also is artistic creation of a fine 
and true sort. He lived sunnily in lifelong poverty, loved his 
friends, loved flowers and music, and "served his generation" 
perhaps not quite according to the notions of Theodore Parker, 
but, one may venture to hazard, "according to the will of God." 

B. P. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Born in 1803, in Boston, which, in his age, he still addressed as 

" Thou darling town of ours! " — 

Emerson had yet from boyhood dear association with the woods 
and the quiet stream of his ancestral town. Therefore, when he 
left his parish and traditional worship, he came to Concord to 
receive directly the word that he was sure "still floats upon the 
morning wind." Here he made a home for the rest of his days, 
found friends, and made others by his lectures and books through 
the older and the younger States, and some in England; and in 
Concord he died. 

In College he was held an indifferent scholar, but read eagerly 
according to his own tastes and interests. He received some prizes 
for declamations, and was chosen class poet after some six had de- 
clined the honour. His Phi Beta Kappa Oration in 1837 interested 
the young (Dr. Holmes has called it our literary Declaration of 
Independence), but startled some of the older hearers, and his 
Divinity School Address, delivered for conscience' sake after some 
hesitation, made him anathema with the College authorities for 
thirty years. 

Emerson often said, "My doom and my strength Is solitude," 
yet his interests were universal, and he needed men and their 
facts, as grist for his mill, to interpret and idealize. His journal 
tells how eagerly he went into the grocery, with open ears for the 
homespun wisdom or Saxon witticisms of the idle group around 
the store, or into the insurance office for the practical or political 
views of the leading citizens, and of his chagrin when they fell 
silent on the instant because he had been a minister and was a 
scholar — an unknown quantity in their lives. He said of inter- 
course with Nature "One to one" was her rule, and so he found 
needed stimulation in one to one conversation in his study or a 
walk in the woods: — 

" If thought unfold her mystery, 
If friendship on me smile, 



54 The Saturday Club 

I walk in fairy palaces 

And talk with gods the while." 

None the less, he had always a craving to meet and talk with men 
of thought and taste and performance, and, as has been shown in ' 
an earlier chapter, through years was working to that end. The 
experiments of the Symposium or Transcendental Club were not 
satisfying. We may well believe that the dull and profuse out- 
numbered the more reserved men of intuition, and the combative 
made the disciples of Nature or of Art wish themselves far away. 
In 1837, perhaps returning from the Symposium, Mr. Emer- 
son wrote: " Private, accidental, confidential conversation breeds 
thought. Clubs produce oftener words." The Town-and-Country 
Club seemed an opportunity for the country members to meet 
bright men of letters and society, but the latter probably did not 
come much, while to the former at least a place to sit down and 
leave their satchels or parcels was a comfort. But the Athenaeum 
already afforded this, with great additional satisfaction of Its 
wealth of books, and the only gallery of sculpture, paintings, and 
prints in Boston. It may have been of the Town-and-Country 
Club, or more probably of the Atlantic Club, that the following 
passage in Emerson's essay "Clubs" speaks. In his Conduct of Life: 
"I remember a social experiment in this direction wherein It ap- 
peared that each of the members fancied he was In need of so- 
ciety, but himself unpresentable. On trial, they all found that 
they could be tolerated by and could tolerate each other. Nay, the 
tendency to extreme self-respect which hesitated to join In a club 
was running rapidly down to abject admiration of each other, when 
the club was broken up by new combinations." It must be re- 
membered that, In lectures and essays, Mr. Emerson carefully 
veiled or blurred personal allusions. 

But his younger friend, Sam Ward, solved the problem for him of 
a fortunate and stable club, though Woodman carried out the plan 
and actually set it a-going. Of Ward already something has been 
and more will be, in turn, told, but here it should be said that, 
while he loyally worked to please Emerson, his knowledge of so- 
ciety made it easy to show his friend who would cement and who 
would disintegrate the Club, and, if it were known that he was 




/c?.^y^ 



Ralph TValdo Emerson 5 5 

largely responsible for its gathering, the latter class could be more 
easily omitted without too serious qualms In Emerson concerning 
some friends. Ward well knew also that — such is human frailty 
— meat and wine, and an appointed place and time, go far to 
making the gatherings of scattered friends sure and punctual, 
and even tend to repel discomfortable stoics. 

For Emerson the Saturday Club fulfilled his desire. It gave him 
frequent opportunity to meet old friends and make new ones of 
various gifts. Almost all of them, like himself, were busy men. 
It would have been difficult, and in many cases unnatural, to seek 
them at their homes. Here they were seen to best advantage, for 
several hours, in the presence of their cronies who knew how to 
draw them out. He could learn from Sumner of affairs In Wash- 
ington or pending international questions, from Governor Andrew 
or Forbes of what Massachusetts was doing in the war, enjoy the 
wit of Lowell, Holmes, and Appleton, hear of England and the 
Continent from Motley and Story in their rare home-comings. 
He could ask what questions he pleased about stars from Pelrce, 
flowers from Gray, or art from Hunt, and meet eminent and in- 
teresting guests from all lands. While he bore his part, it was his 
delight, In company as In solitude, to listen. In 1870, he wrote in 
his journal : " In ' Clubs ' I ought to have said that men, being each 
a treasure-house of valuable experiences, — and yet the man often 
shy and daunted by company into dumbness, — it needs to court 
him, to put him at his ease, to make him laugh or weep, and so at 
last to get his naturel confessions, and his best experience." 

Again: "If I were rich, I should get the education I have always 
wished by persuading Agassiz to let me carry him to Canada; 
and Dr. Gray to go to examine the trans-Mississippi flora; and 
Wyman should find me necessary to his excavations; and Alvan 
Clark should make a telescope for me too; and I can easily see 
how to find the gift for each master that would domesticate me 
with him for a time." 

The following passage from a very recent writer on Emerson * 
well states the importance of the Club to him: — 

"His natural man was pervaded by a hunger for facts. . . . He 

^ Professor O. W. Firkin in his Study of Emerson. 



5 6 T'he Saturday Club 

packed the day with impressions; succession, variety, surprise, 
were indispensable to his well-being. He needed news like a club- 
man, though the news might belong, if you liked, to Nineveh in the 
pre-Christian era. . . . Hence ... his interest . . . and his power 
to erect that interest into a flag of truce beneath which he could 
converse amicably with persons who might have found his general 
views inscrutable or ridiculous. . . . When we have grasped the 
force of this impulse in the mere heathen Emerson, so to speak, we 
are prepared for the magnitude of the result when the devout 
Emerson confers on every fact the added fire of a religious value." 

Although Mr. Emerson could never get over his feeling that he 
was not adapted for social occasions, and sometimes called him- 
self a "kill-joy," he greatly valued the Club and returned from it 
always full of admiration for his friends. •:\ 

He once wrote in his journal: "Social occasions also are part of 
Nature and being, and the delight in another's superiority is, as 
Aunt Mary said, my best gift from God, for here the moral nature 
is involved, which is higher than the intellectual." 

Longfellow wrote: "More and more do I feel, as I advance in 
life, how little we really know of each other. Friendship seems to 
me like the touch of musical-glasses — it is only contact; but the 
glasses themselves, and their contents, remain quite distinct and 
unmingled. . . . Some poems are like the Centaurs — a mingling 
of man and beast, and begotten of Ixion on a cloud." 

But Emerson earned his living by lecturing, and so lost many 
winter meetings, when afar in the West. Emerson and Longfellow 
did not often meet, but the Club brought them together agreeably. 

With all his admiration of the wits of the Club, Emerson some- 
times sufi"ered mortification because of them. His nervous organ- 
ization, perhaps transmitted from his serious ancestry, was vul- 
nerable in one respect and reacted painfully to wit suddenly 
sprung upon it. In an essay he voices his abhorrence of "disgust- 
ing squeals of joy," and gives the counsel of an old relative to her 
niece, "My dear, never laugh; when you do, you show all your 
faults." At an unexpected shot of wit his own face was likely 
to break up almost painfully, though he could control the sound 
entirely. He tells his own story impersonally in Letters and Social 



Ralph JValdo Emerson 57 

Aims: "How often and with what unfeigned compassion we have 
seen such a person receiving Hke a wilHng martyr the whispers into 
his ear of a man of wit. The victim who has just received the dis- 
charge, if in a solemn company, has the air very much of a stout 
vessel which has just shipped a heavy sea; and though it does not 
split it, the poor bark is for the moment critically staggered. The 
peace of society and the decorum of tables seem to require that next 
to a notable wit should always be posted a phlegmatic bolt-upright 
man, able to stand without movement of muscle whole broad- 
sides of this Greek fire. It is a true shaft of Apollo, and traverses 
the universe, and unless it encounter a mystic or a dumpish soul, 
goes everywhere heralded and harbingered by smiles and greet- 
ings. Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No 
dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand 
against good wit. It is like ice, on which no beauty of form, no 
majesty of carriage, can plead any immunity, — they must walk 
gingerly, according to the laws of ice, or down they must go, dig- 
nity and all. 'Do'st thou think, because thou art virtuous, there 
shall be no more cakes and ale.?'" 

To the city men dinner parties were common occurrences, but 
in them the solitary scholar found important values, and wished to 
use the six or eight festivals of the year to best purpose. In his 
journal Emerson confesses: "At my Club, I suppose I behave very 
ill in securing always, if I can, a place by a valued friend, and, 
though I suppose (though I have never heard it) that I offend by 
this selection, sometimes too visible, my reason is that I, who see, 
in ordinary, rarely, select society, must make the best use of this 
opportunity, having, at the same time, the feeling that 

* I could be happy with either, 
Were the other dear charmer away.' 

I am interested not only in my advantages, but in my disadvan- 
tages, that is, in my fortunes proper; that is, in watching my fate, 
to notice, after each act of mine, what result. Is it prosperous.? Is 
it adverse.^ And thus I find a pure entertainment of the intellect, 
alike in what is called good or bad. I can find my biography in 
every fable that I read." 



5 8 T'he Saturday Club 



In spite of his words about his doom, and strength, in solitude, 
he felt that these Club dinners were worth far more than their 
cost to scholars living apart from men of action and wit and re- 
search. Keen in his watch for the great laws, he eagerly listened 
to the talk. He once said of men of affairs: "They don't know 
what to do with their facts. I know." For the law was one, alike 
in matter and in spirit, and he watched their discoveries with the 
intuitions of ancient prophets and of poets, and with what had 
been told them by the pine tree yesterday. About this time he 
writes in his journal: — 

"Nature, — what we ask of her is only words to clothe our 
thoughts. The mind is to find the thought. Chemistry, Geology, 
Hydraulics are secondary. The Atomic Theory is, of course, only 
an interior process produced^ as the geometers say, or the outside 
effect of a foregone metaphysical theory; hydrostatics only the sur- 
coatof ideal necessities. Yet the thoughts are few, the forms many, 
the large vocabulary or many-coloured coat of the indigent Unity. 
The savants are very chatty and vain; but, hold them hard to 
principle and definition, and they become very mute and near- 
sighted. What is motion.'* What is beauty.'' What is life.'* What is 
force.'' Push them hard, drive home. They will not be loquacious. 
I have heard that Peirce, the Cambridge mathematician, has come 
to Plato at last. 'T is clear that the invisible and imponderable is 
the sole fact. 'Why changes not the violet earth into musk.^' asks 
Hafiz. What is the term of this overflowing Metamorphosis.'' I 
do not know what are the stoppages, but I see that an all-dis- 
solving unity changes all that which changes not." 

Not far off follow the next entries : — 

'''' Fluxional quantities. Fluxions, I believe, treat of flowing 
numbers, as, for example, the path through space of a point on 
the rim of a cart-wheel. Flowing or varying. Most of my values 
are very variable; — my estimate of America, which sometimes 
runs very low, sometimes to ideal prophetic proportions. My esti- 
mate of my own mental means and resources is all or nothing; in 
happy hours, life looking Infinitely rich, and sterile at others. My 
value of my Club is as elastic as steam or gunpowder, so great 
now, so little anon. Literature looks now all-sufficient, but in 



Ralph TValdo Emerson 59 

high and happy conversation it shrinks away to poor experi- 
menting." 

^''Resources. If Cabot, if Lowell, if Agassiz, if Alcott come to 
me to be messmates in some ship, or partners in the same colony, 
what they chiefly bring, all they bring, is their thoughts, their 
way of classifying and seeing things; and how a sweet temper can 
cheer, how a fool can dishearten the days!" 

Emerson found the Club much to his purpose when Englishmen 
came to Concord with letters to him, and there they found the best 
introduction to the persons they would naturally wish to meet 
in New England. His value of his Concord friends made him wish 
that others should find their real merits, although it was manifestly 
impossible that they should become members. Alcott is men- 
tioned by Dana as having been brought to one of the early Albion 
dinners, and Henry James, Sr., praises EUery Channing's demean- 
our, in an amusing letter which will appear later. The degree 
of success of the experiment of trapping a faun in Walden woods 
and bringing him to the Club is shown in this letter from Thoreau 
to his English friend Cholmondeley,^ who had urged him not to live 
a solitary life, and asked him, "Are there no clubs in Boston?" — 

"I have lately got back to that glorious society called Solitude, 
where we meet our friends continually, and can imagine the out- 
side world also to be peopled. Yet some of my acquaintance would 
fain hustle me into the almshouse for 'the sake of society,' as if 
I were pining for that diet, when I seem to myself a most be- 
friended man, and find constant employment. However, they do 
not believe a word I say. They have got a Club, the handle of 
which is in the Parker House at Boston, and with this they beat me 
from time to time, expecting to make me tender or minced meat, 
so fit for a club to dine off. 

* Hercules with his club 
The Dragon did drub ; 
But More of More Hall, 
With nothing at all, 
He slew the Dragon of Wantley.' 

' The correspondence between Thomas Cholmondeley, who had boarded with Mrs. 
Thoreau, and Henry Thoreau was published in the Atlantic by Mr. F. B. Sanborn in Decem- 
ber, 1893. 



6o T^he Saturday Club 

Ah ! that More of More Hall knew what fair play was. ^ Channing, 
who wrote to me about it once, brandishing the club vigorously 
(being set on by another, probably), says now, seriously, that 
he is sorry to find by my letters that I am 'absorbed in politics,' 
and adds, begging my pardon for his plainness, 'Beware of an 
extraneous life!' and so he does his duty and washes his hands of 
me. I tell him that it is as if he should say to the sloth, that fellow 
that creeps so slowly along a tree, and cries from time to time, 
'Beware of dancing!' 

"The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering for want of 
society. Was never a case like it? First, I did not know that I was 
suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought 
it was indigestion of the society I got. 

"As for the Parker House, I went there once, when the Club 
was away, but I found it hard to see through the cigar smoke, 
and men were deposited about in chairs over the marble floor, as 
thick as legs of bacon in a smoke-house. It was all smoke, and 
no salt, Attic or other. The only room in Boston which I visit 
with alacrity is the Gentlemen's Room at the Fitchburg Depot, 
where I wait for the cars, sometimes for two hours, in order to 
get out of town. It is a paradise to the Parker House, for no 
smoking is allowed, and there is more retirement. A large and 
respectable club of us hire it (Town-and-Country Club),^ and I 
am pretty sure to find some one there whose face is set the same 
way as my own." 

In respect to Emerson's smoking it should be authoritatively 
said (the more since a widely circulated tobacco advertisement 

' Thoreau, though he made light of clubs and would not go, when invited by Emerson 
as his guest, to the Saturday Club (as his friend Channing did), had friendly relations with 
several members: Emerson, of course, first; then Hawthorne, from Old Manse days, yet 
rarely; Henry James, whom he liked; Agassiz whom he had efficiently served by furnishing 
him many fishes, turtles, birds, and small mammals from Concord, to Agassiz's enthusi- 
astic delight, and Elliot Cabot, then studying with Agassiz, had been the go-between in 
these transactions; Judge Hoar, who was Thoreau's neighbour, kindly enough, but en- 
tirely unsympathetic. As for Channing's complaint that Thoreau was "absorbed in poli- 
tics," it meant this: that Thoreau, always personally giving comfort and furtherance to any 
fugitive slave that came to him, was, at this time, deeply stirred by the attempts to make 
Slave States of Kansas and Nebraska. He attended the Free-State meetings in Concord and 
contributed money. 

* The day of the Town-and-Country Club was past. Thoreau, of course, means the 
general public's use of the station. 



Ralph TValdo Emerson 6 1 

stated, a few years since, with a garbled picture, that Emerson 
doted on his pipe, or words to that effect) ; that he was the most 
abstemious of smokers, using a fraction of a cigar, but not even 
daily. "^ Once, on the eloquent urgency of Mr. John Holmes, he 
tried a pipe in the Adirondac camp. Once was enough. 

To persons of ascetic temperament, or those who watched their 
digestive processes overmuch, Mr. Emerson would say that an 
occasional dinner, in good company, with many courses and wine, 
would only do them good — an excellent medicine. But no man 
thought less about food than he. What was set before him he ate 
without comment, unless in praise. But should any question of 
ingredients or methods arise, he would say, "No! No! It is a beau- 
tiful crystallization," or "roses and violets." 

In his youth, because an overmastering love of writing and 
books kept him too much indoors and quite away from games, he 
was delicate and barely escaped consumption. Nature, when he 
came to consult her oracle in Concord woods, gave him health, 
and it henceforth increased until the last ten years of his life. 
Because of early neglect, his chest was narrow, and hence his 
shoulders had an unusual slope which made his neck seem very 
long, but his legs were well developed and he was a strong and 
swift walker and seldom used a carriage. He stood six feet in his 
shoes and walked erect. He had healthy colour, and very few 
wrinkles came with age. His eyes were a clear, strong blue and 
his hair straight and rather dark brown and never allowed to 
grow very long, 

Lowell had a deep reverence for Emerson. In his essay "De- 
mocracy," after speaking of the peculiar regard which Lincoln 
won, he says: "And I remember another whom popular respect 
enveloped, as with a halo. The least vulgar of men, the most aus- 
terely genial and the most independent of opinion. Wherever he 
went, he never met a stranger, but everywhere neighbours and 
friends proud of him as their ornament and decoration. Institu- 
tions which could bear and breed such men as Lincoln and Emer- 
son had surely some energy for good." 

^ It should be said that this firm courteously withdrew their advertisement with apology, 
on being informed of the facts. 



62 ^he Saturday Club 

That inborn element of aloofness, recognized by Emerson as 
a limitation, and an advantage, did not prevent the happiness 
which he gratefully expressed in "the escort of friends with which 
each spirit walks through time." 

E. W. E. 



EBENEZER ROCKWOOD HOAR 

George Frisbie Hoar wrote of the family, "Our ancestors were 
Puritans in every line of descent, as far as they are known, from 
the time when Puritanism was first known." Joanna Hoar, a 
widow of the sheriff of Gloucestershire,^ came with her children 
to Scituate in 1640. John Hoar, her eldest son, soon settled in 
Concord, a brave and humane citizen and lawyer. His independ- 
ence in the matter of church-going and his remarks on the preach- 
ing of the son of the reverend founder of the town caused him 
to be fined and temporarily disbarred. Neither he nor his de- 
scendants were subdued, — several of them were present at the 
Concord Fight, — yet it should be said that punctual attendance 
on the services at the First Church in Concord has distinguished 
the family for several generations, and they have not flouted the 
ministers. Ebenezer Rockwood, eldest son of "that walking in- 
tegrity," Squire Samuel Hoar, was born in Concord, in 18 16. 
His timbers were strong Puritan and his outward appearance often 
in keeping, but too much of the discipline had caused some reac- 
tion unseen; within burned a flame of affection and charity, and 
wider culture, and especially a strong sense of humour mellowed 
the type. 

Rockwood entered Harvard, and graduated in 1835. In later 
years, he told his sister how, in the service of the Med. Fac, he 
had lain on his back through wretched midnight hours in the 
belfry of Harvard Hall labouring to saw off the tongue of the bell 
which summoned students to morning prayer. It will be seen how 
his life thereafter wiped out this sin against religion and his be- 
loved Alma Mater. One of his classmates said that Hoar was, 
from the first, the pride and ornament of his class. He gave the 
English oration at Commencement, and his life thereafter exem- 
plified its theme, "Christian Philosophy, its Practical Applica- 
tion." Richard H. Dana was for a time his classmate. 

A year beyond the Alleghanies, as a schoolmaster at Pittsburg, 

^ It was in her honour that the Judge founded the scholarship at Radcliffe College. 



64 The Saturday Club 

was admirable treatment to give the country boy and Harvard 
student enlargement and perspective. Then he returned to Con- 
cord and the study of law. Lowell, three classes behind him, was 
presently sent up to Concord, rusticated "for continued neglect 
of college duties," and thus a lifelong friendship began. Lowell 
pleasantly records this in verse, long after: — 

" I know the village, — I was sent there once 
A-schoolin', 'cause to home I played the dunce ; 
An' I 've ben sence a-visitin' the Jedge, 
Whose garding whispers with the river's edge, 
Where I 've sot mornin's, lazy as the bream, 
Whose on'y business is to head upstream, — 
(We call 'em punkin-seed) ; or else in chat 
Along 'th the Jedge, who covers with his hat 
More wit an' gumption an' shrewd Yankee sense 
Than there is mosses on an ole stone fence." 

The elder's steadying influence was doubtless good for Lowell, 
and the younger's poetic enthusiasm probably broadened Hoar's 
poetic range. And yet the latter had a taste for the classics in 
College days, and, conversant from early childhood with the stately 
English and imagery of the Bible, then with the plain yet dra- 
matic Pilgrim's Progress, and, later, with Milton and Shakspeare, 
his taste was elevated and his strong memory well stored. His apt 
or witty quotations all through life showed this. He had the in- 
estimable fortune of the influence of his elder sister Elizabeth. 
She lived close by him caring for their father and mother. He 
visited them every evening when in town. The beauty of her 
character, sensitive to all that was fair and noble in nature or in 
literature, in men and women, affected in turn the village in 
which she passed her quiet home life. Mr. Emerson said of her, 
"Elizabeth Hoar consecrates." He regarded her as a sister and 
she formed a bond between him and her brother, as having been 
betrothed to Emerson's beloved brother Charles who faded away 
in quick consumption. She never married. 

Young Rockwood Hoar immediately made his mark at the 
Middlesex Bar. In his early practice before It, he was constantly 
pitted against Benjamin F. Butler and won the verdict in almost 
every case. Governor Greenhalge said; "It is not too much to 



Kbenezer Rockwood Hoar 6 5 

say that he wielded at will that fierce democracy. His will was law 
because he brought it under the law." 

Mr. Hoar took a holiday in 1847 and crossed the Atlantic for 
the only time in his busy life. The writer wishes to record an 
exploit of the Judge, bearing witness to his love for the classics 
and to his personal prowess. He told me that, when he was in 
Rome and his party were going to leave next morning, one of them 
said at dinner, "Well, you have n't swum across the Tiber yet, 
after all," for the Concord man had wished to know just what 
Horatius Cocles's feat was, and had said he meant to do it if he 
could. Well, next morning he rose at four, got the porter to unlock 
the door, went along the Corso and through the Porto del Popolo 
and down to the river-bank above the city, where houses were few, 
stripped and swam. But 

"The troubled Tyber chafing with her shores" 

was strong, and he was swept down in a long diagonal. This was 
more than he had calculated on, but, like Adam walking in the 
garden, he walked upstream, and swam back to as near his 
clothes as possible, and without exhaustion. At breakfast he re- 
marked to his companions, " If I had n't swum the Tiber, as you 
said, last night, I have now swum it twice." 

His short holiday stored his mind with noble impressions of the 
past. Then he returned to the Republic and threw his manhood 
into the present, the struggle for right against temporary gain. 
When, in the Massachusetts Senate, Boston manufacturers, high 
in social position, deprecated some resolutions against encroaching 
slavery in fear lest they should ofTend the South, the firm voice 
of Hoar rang out in answer: "I think, Mr. President, that it is 
quite as desirable that the Legislature of Massachusetts should 
represent its conscience as its cotton." This was the solving word 
in the Whig Party, and the young lawyer became a strong cham- 
pion in the small force which fought on to a victory in twenty 
years. 

Mr. Hoar stood on a firm foundation of time-hallowed religion, 
law, usage, and neighbourly kindness. New notions he tested 
somewhat rudely by common sense. He had no hospitality for the 



66 The Saturday Club 



troubled or wild questioners of society who thronged the ways in 
his young manhood. But he was clear-eyed and sure on basal 
principles of right and wrong. 

In 1849 Mr. Hoar was appointed a Justice of the Court of 
Common Pleas. To him in his judicial capacity firmly and justly 
exercised for years, this tribute was paid.^ "He illustrated in 
a very remarkable manner . . . how immensely the individuality 
and personal genius of the judge can add to the weight of his 
official utterances. The great judgments which abide, and which 
become the landmarks of the law, derive their chief importance, 
not from their relation to positive constitutions, but from their 
relation to universal reason and to the underlying verities and 
forces of morality; and that relation it is the business of a man to 
discover and to state. In a great cause, presented for final adjudi- 
cation, the question and the man meet; but the man is much the 
larger term in the equation." A bit of history, little known, show- 
ing how Judge Hoar measured up to this standard under the 
grievous conditions of the time, should find a place even in this 
brief sketch of the man. 

Shortly after his appointment, the year that the Fugitive Slave 
Law was passed, followed the humiliation of Massachusetts and 
of Boston in their returning to slavery, under that statute, Sims, 
and later. Burns. In 1854 (the year before the Club was founded), 
in a suit arising from an attempted rescue in the latter case, 
Judge Hoar, deeply stirred, charged the jury to this effect: He 
tells them that this law is binding upon all citizens as having been 
enacted by Congress, approved by the President, and held to be 
valid by the Supreme Court, yet grants that its decision was based 
upon authority and not on right, hence, later, it may be held to 
be unconstitutional; then, considering the civic duty in the ad- 
ministration of public justice, he admits that, ij he were giving 
his private view, he might say, "That statute seems to me to evince 
a more deliberate and settled disregard of all principles of consti- 
tutional liberty than any other enactment which has ever come 
under my notice. You, Gentlemen, might each of you enter- 
tain similar private opinions. But of what avail is it, and what 

* By Mr. Frank Golding. 



Kbenezer Rockwood Hoar 6 7 

right have you or I to act upon these opinions?" He then ex- 
plains that it could never have been intended by the framers of 
our government that a rule of law should be dependent upon the 
individual opinion of a judge or juror called to administer it. The 
only safe rule is for the citizen to regard such a law's validity as a 
question settled. He then admits that a wicked law may be passed 
even in a republic, and says, "If a statute is passed which any 
citizen, examining his duty by the best light which God has given 
him, . . . believes to be wicked, one which, acting under the law 
of God, he ought to disobey, unquestionably he ought to disobey 
that statute. ... I suppose that any man who would seriously deny 
that there is anything higher than human law must ultimately 
deny the existence of the Most High. But, Gentlemen, a man whose 
private conscience leads him to disobey a law recognized by the 
community must take the consequences. It is a matter solely 
between him and his Maker. He should take good care . . . that 
his private opinion does not result from passion or prejudice, but, 
if he believes it is his duty to disobey, he must be prepared to 
abide by the result, and the laws . . . must be enforced, though it 
be to his grievous harm. It will not do for the public authori- 
ties to recognize his private opinion as a justification of his acts." 
Of Judge Hoar, as Charles Francis Adams, Jr., said, "Whenever 
and wherever it was struck, the material of which he was made 
returned a true ring." 

Mr. Adams also wrote of the membership of the Club: "Alone 
among the prominent members of the bar that I have named. 
Judge Hoar and Richard H. Dana — those two — had a distinctly 
literary element in their composition. . . . Literary men instinc- 
tively recognized that it was there. This was most apparent at 
the Saturday Club. The angle of contact in the two was different, 
and well worthy of notice. They were both remarkable men, . . . 
they would have distinguished themselves anywhere or at any 
time. Shakspeare, Moliere, Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, 
Walter Scott, or Goethe would have delighted in their company; 
and blind Milton's countenance would have lighted up, if upon 
a Sunday afternoon he could have looked forward to an hour's 
call from his friend, and brother Puritan, Rockwood Hoar. But 



68 The Saturday Club 

while Dana found his point of contact with the literary man in 
his wealth of imagination and his conversational power, that 
of Hoar lay in his shrewd common-sense perception, his keen 
wit, and his genuine, homely sense of humour. So Emerson loved 
him; Hawthorne studied him; Lowell paid tribute to him; . . . 
He walked with them in their peculiar province as their equal." 

At the Club, the town- and the country-members refreshed 
each other. The Judge shone there in his wisdom and his wit. 
It was his delight to enter the lists in conversation, especially 
with Lowell and Holmes. Mr. Norton said it was delightful when 
the Judge and Lowell got to talking together. They knew and 
liked each other so well, and were entirely free with one another. 
Lowell knew that Hoar was holding him as an equal in wit, and 
fenced carefully. In Lowell's poem on Agassiz after the death of 
that great and genial man, he devotes some stanzas to the Club, 
and pictures it with Agassiz presiding, and, describing Emerson, 
he uses this happy Yankee simile: — 

" Listening with eyes averse I see him sit, 
Pricked with the cider of the Judge's wit, 
Ripe-hearted home-brew, fresh and fresh again." 

Mr. William G. Russell said of it: "There is a Yankee wit, as 
different in its type from English or Gallic wit as is the flavour, 
the aroma, of our Baldwin apple from that of the southern olive. 
There are sudden turns of thought which, precipitated into terse, 
clear, sharp forms of speech, like crystals, we could no more fail 
to recognize as of New England origin than we could fail to know 
the granite of our Quincy quarry." But, like an over-athletic 
school-boy, the Judge was sometimes thoughtlessly rough in his 
play. Mr. Fields said, "An opening for his wit he could not bring 
himself to let slip — it would seem to him a crime — 'Opportu- 
nity is fleeting' — he shot his shaft; the dazzle of the wit hid from 
him the mortification which the other party tried not to show." 
His considerate and sensitive, though loyal and loving sister 
Elizabeth well said of her brother, in my hearing, "Rockwood 
does n't know when he bites your head off." A friend remarked 
that, whether in court or at a feast, "he was never at a loss for an 



Kbenezer Rockwood Hoar 6 9 

authority in point, or an apt illustration from history or romance, 
or from proverb, psalm, or parable from the Book of Books; yet for 
his law and his conduct he relied, and safely relied, chiefly on 
that strong, native, sound common-sense with which he was born, 
and which he applied to cases, to men, and to the affairs of life." 
Judge Hoar was a member of the Joint High Commission ap- 
pointed to negotiate a treaty for the settlement of differences, 
arising from the war, between the United States and Great Britain. 
One day, perhaps at a dinner, the British members expressed 
much interest in the practice of registering deeds here. They 
thought the Institution an excellent American invention. The 
Judge explained It, but told them that they were in error in deem- 
ing it new, for there was written evidence that it was employed 
by the Greeks centuries before the Christian era. The English 
statesmen were utterly Incredulous of bis statement. But the 
Judge went on with serious face, "Yes, not only did they register 
their deeds, but they were familiar with the doctrine of Construc- 
tive Notice, for you will remember In the Anthology, — 

'Athenian i^schylus, Euphorion's son, 
Buried in Gela's earth these lines declare, 
His deeds are registered at Marathon, 
Known to the deep-haired Mede who met him there.' " 

The Judge's forceful Integrity and blunt candour made him 
unpopular among the politicians, who brought President Grant 
reluctantly to request his resignation from the office of Attorney- 
General, the Senate having already rejected his nomination as a 
Justice of the Supreme Court, in 1869. On this event, which will 
be further mentioned In the general history of the Club, Mr. 
Emerson thus commented In his journal: "I notice that they 
who drink for some time the Potomac water lose their relish for 
the water of the Charles River, the Merrimac, and the Connecti- 
cut. But I think the public health requires that the Potomac 
water should be corrected by copious Infusions of these provin- 
cial streams. Rockwood Hoar retains his relish for the Musketa- 
quld." 

The Judge was a main pillar of the old First Church In Concord, 



yo The Saturday Club 

which had passed from liberal Orthodoxy into Channing Uni- 
tarianism. His niece speaks of "The power in him of a strong in- 
herited religious faith, for, though he made that faith his own, it 
was his fathers' God, interpreted by him, that he worshipped, and 
the faith soothed his irritable nerves, and gave him in disappoint- 
ment and sorrow a dignified quiet." The spread of Episcopacy 
among New England towns he was inclined to regard as an un- 
warrantable intrusion. He liked to tell of his remonstrance to 
the Right Reverend Phillips Brooks, — "Bishop, how is it that, in 
your liturgy, you pray that we may be delivered from heresy and 
schism, and yet are proceeding to break in upon our good record 
in Concord, where there has been no schism in the Church for 
two hundred and fifty years?" Yet he held the good Bishop in 
high esteem. He also valued the Book of Common Prayer for the 
special distinction it gives to his beloved town, — "O God who 
art the Author of good and the lover of Concord." On the other 
hand, he told a classmate, an Episcopalian, that he, for one, was 
not content to go through this world as a "miserable sinner." 

His love for Harvard College was like a son's love for his mother. 
President Walker, of Harvard, spoke of him as "a devoted friend 
of the College which he has been able to serve in a thousand ways 
by the wisdom of his counsels and the weight of his character." 
Emerson said of his speech at an Alumni Dinner that it was a 
perfect example of Coleridge's definition of genius, "The carrying 
the feelings of youth into the powers of manhood"; and the audi- 
ence were impressed and delighted with the rare combination of 
the innocence of a boy with the faculty of a hero. 

Judge Hoar was tall and well-made; a little heavy in gait after 
middle life, but never obese. A columnar erectness with broad 
front, like a male caryatid, symbolized his strong uprightness, the 
likeness heightened, because, though sedentary, he never allowed 
his head to stoop, and seldom turned it, rather turning entirely 
toward the person to whom he spoke, and bringing his searching 
blue eyes upon him. His brows were level, his face absolutely un- 
der command, his mouth shut firmly. Through his gold-bowed spec- 
tacles he seemed to look into the person before him. His dignified 
presence, which could be formidable, could also surprise by genial 



Kbenezer Rockwood Hoar 7 ^ 

and affectionate expression. His features were fairly good, his 
beard and hair light brown until the years whitened them. His 
portrait by Frank H. Tompkins in the Harvard Union is ad- 
mirable. 

As long as strength allowed, the Judge never failed, if he could 
help it, In joining the happy fellowship of the Saturday dinners. 
There he was most genial, and always kind to the younger mem- 
bers, and his presence assured the success of the meeting. 

E. W. E. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

None of the original members of the Club are more closely identi- 
fied with it, in the memories or imaginations of present mem- 
bers, than the author of the "Biglow Papers." He is recalled 
or pictured to-day as an inevitable selection, when the material 
for membership was first canvassed; one born for it, as other men 
had been born for the purple. Yet there are surprisingly few ref- 
erences to the Club in Lowell's Letters. His witty talk, like that 
of Oliver Wendell Holmes, is known to have " kept the table on 
a roar," and to have touched upon an extraordinarily wide range 
of topics, but the flashing phrases have been long forgotten, and 
there is scarcely an authentic tradition of a single hon mot uttered 
in the Parker House by either of these two preeminently witty 
members of the Club. "Transitory, very," as Carlyle used to say 
of all human things; yet even the half-imagined echoes of such 
voices, and the shadows of such vital and delightful figures, are 
caught at by the imaginations of their successors. They remain 
"dear guests and ghosts." 

It must be remembered that when the Saturday Club was or- 
ganized, Lowell was not yet forty. But he had already produced 
much of his most characteristic work as a poet, had won a distinct 
place as a prose writer and lecturer on literary topics, and had be- 
gun his career as a teacher at Harvard. Among all the New Eng- 
land men of letters he was the natural choice as the first editor of 
the Atlantic Monthly at its foundation in 1857. He was a known 
man. 

Lowell's central position among the original members of the 
Saturday Club was also due to his fortunate combination of 
many representative local traits and habits of mind. His iden- 
tification with the community was complete. The son of the 
Reverend Charles Lowell, the amiable and conservative minister 
of the West Church of Boston, he was born in 1819 at "Elm- 
wood," the famous "Oliver" house of Tory Row, Cambridge, 
which had passed into the possession of the Lowell family in 181 8. 



yames Russell Lowell 7 3 

There the poet and diplomatist died in 1891, and his lifelong aflFec- 
tion for the home of his birth is familiar to all readers of his letters 
and his verse. In the ample library of his father he learned that 
love of books which became one of the master passions of his 
life; and under the noble elms and pines of the thirty-acre estate, 
and. along the banks of the neighbouring and friendly Charles, 
the boy transmuted his keen impressions of natural beauty into 
his first attempts at rhythmic utterance. At Mr. Wells's school, 
kept in another of the famous old mansions of Tory Row, and at 
Harvard College, where he became a member of the class of 1838, 
young Lowell developed humour, the power of shrewd Yankee 
observation, and a somewhat abnormal faculty of sentiment: 
— perhaps an inheritance from his over-imaginative mother. He 
rebelled at academic discipline, though his rustication at Concord, 
in the summer of his Senior year, brought him golden recompense 
in an acquaintance with Emerson. In less than twenty years 
thereafter the two poets were destined to be fellow-members of 
the Saturday Club, but in 1838 the exile ventured, in the Class 
Poem which he was then composing, to indulge in some boyish sat- 
ire upon Emerson's transcendentalism. The author of "Nature," 
"The American Scholar," and "The Divinity School Address" 
was in the summer of 1838 very much upon the mind of Cam- 
bridge and Boston! 

This sensitiveness to the shades and humours of local feeling, 
tempered with a detachment which at times took the form of 
sheer boyish rebellion, was characteristic of Lowell. In his at- 
tachment to his native soil, and his innate perception of its qual- 
ity, it need scarcely be said that the author of "Cambridge Thirty 
Years Ago" and of the "Biglow Papers" was pure Yankee; quick 
of eye, whimsical of tongue, irreverently reverent, and passionately 
loyal to his Puritan stock. He was saved from narrowness by his 
volatile exuberance — just as Holmes was saved by his wit, and 
Emerson by his serene excursions into the upper air. All three of 
them were artists, each after his own fashion; and all three, like 
Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Whittier, their future commensals 
of the Saturday Club, helped to create the ideal image of their 
native New England. But Lowell, though lacking the absolute 



74 'The Saturday Club 

and flawless quality of Emerson's highest vision, and lacking 
also the sustained artistic perfection of workmanship character- 
istic of Hawthorne and Longfellow, had nevertheless, through his 
many-sided sympathies, a quicker response to the various sides 
of Puritan character. He was enabled to leave a record of it 
which seems to-day more warm-blooded and human than the 
pages of greater writers than himself: — so fortunate was his 
gift of intimate companionship with the New England which had 
murmured to him in the trees of Elmwood and in the folios of his 
father's library and in the turbulent and troubled and fantastic 
talk of his own youthful contemporaries. 

The secret of genius has sometimes been thought to lie in a ca- 
pacity for prolonged adolescence. Lowell, though likely to be 
ranked by most readers as a man of remarkable talent rather than 
as a genius, certainly possessed, and maintained to the end, an 
uncommon portion of the soul of youth. Of his associates in the 
Club, Emerson was his senior by only sixteen years, Hawthorne 
by fifteen, Longfellow and Whittier by twelve, and Holmes by 
ten, but all of these men, except the last, seem sedate and tran- 
quil in mood when compared with Lowell. His own whimsical 
description of himself, toward the close of his life, as belonging 
in a "hospital for incurable children," was a just and felicitous 
characterization. Robert L. Stevenson, another incurable child, 
has urged somewhere that a perennial boyishness is one ingredient 
of the elasticity, the fine resilience of good talk in every intimate 
circle. Like Stevenson, Lowell was essentially an improvisor, 
building up conversational fancies as a child builds his castle 
out of cards. "Expression with him," remarks Ferris Greenslet, 
one of the most acute of his friendly critics, " always meant im- 
provisation, depending for its effectiveness on the stimulus of the 
occasion, the fervour or animation of his mood." Rockwood Hoar 
and Oliver Wendell Holmes struck out, we may be sure, as many 
swiftly witty phrases as did Lowell, but for the true childlike 
bildende power over moods and fancies, Lowell was unique among 
his companions. 

He had also, as it scarcely needs to be said, other requisites of 
the well-equipped talker: friendliness, a delicate tact, a flexible 



yames Russell Lowell 7 5 

sympathy. His range of reading was very wide, even in his youth, 
and it broadens steadily throughout his Hfe. His memory was 
exact. There were in his talk, as in his prose essays, too many 
remote and recondite allusions, even for the bookishly inclined. 
None of his self-characterizations is better known than his proud 
"I am a bookman." Yet his book-learning, though often as fan- 
tastically rich and crowded as that of the seventeenth-century 
writers whom he loved, was humanized by his moral earnest- 
ness, and lightened by his playful fancy. Macaulay probably knew 
more facts, and Franklin could coin a shrewder proverb, and 
Sam Johnson could put the whole weight of a more massive per- 
sonality behind the stroke of a single verb or noun, but in a 
three-hours talk at a club table Lowell's friends believed that he 
could hold his own against any of the great talkers of the world. 

Sometimes Lowell rebelled, as did Stevenson, against a certain 
self-consciousness that is apt to colour general dinner-table talk. 
Each of these men, it must be remembered, was an intensely self- 
conscious person. Stevenson confessed: "For many natures there 
is not much charm in the still, chambered society, the circle of 
bland countenances, the digestive silence, the admired remark, 
the flutter of affectionate approval." And Lowell wrote to Norton 
in 1858: "A dinner is never a good thing the next day. For the 
moment, though, what is better.'' We dissolve our pearls and 
drink them nobly — if we have them — but bring none away. A 
good talk is almost as much out of the question among clever men 
as among men that think themselves clever. Creation in pairs 
proves the foreordained superiority of the tete-d-tetey 

Once in his life, at least, Lowell yielded to the temptation of 
tete-d-tete conversation at the Club, and like many another mem- 
ber since his day, utilized that gathering for attending to the busi- 
ness of Harvard College. He wrote to Norton in May, 1866, 
that he had taken Christopher P. Cranch, who had been absent 
from Boston for many years, to a dinner of the Club on a preced- 
ing Saturday: "With me it was a business meeting. I sat between 
Hoar and Brimmer, that I might talk over college matters. Things 
will be arranged to suit me, I rather think, and the salary (perhaps) 
left even larger than I thought." But this was Lowell's sole re- 



7 6 The Saturday Club 

corded transgression against the spirit of general good-fellowship 
which he had done so much to create. 

Even when the Club was first established, Lowell was already 
rich in cosmopolitan experience. The habit of travel and study 
in Europe had been steadily increasing among Boston and Har- 
vard men, since that epoch-making return of George Ticknor and 
Edward Everett from their European studies, at the time of 
Lowell's birth. Emerson had visited Europe in search of broader 
horizons; Holmes and Longfellow had made long sojourns there 
for professional study; young Richard Dana's Two Years before 
the Mast had not only stimulated other youths like Herman Mel- 
ville to follow his seafaring example, but had given many a young 
Bostonian, like Francis Parkman, the spirit of adventurous 
travel. There were few strictly homekeeping minds among the 
earlier members of the Saturday Club. Even men like Whittier, 
who were prevented by narrow circumstances or professional la- 
bours from making the "grand tour," astonish us to-day by their 
intimate knowledge of European politics and social life. Lowell's 
chance had not come until 1851 and 1852, when his American rep- 
utation as a poet was well established. After his appointment as 
Longfellow's successor in the Smith Professorship in 1855, he 
spent a year in Germany and Italy in preparation for his new 
duties. After his resignation in the spring of 1872, he passed two 
years in Europe. He was minister in Madrid for three years (1877- 
80) and in London for five (1880-85) ; and after his diplomatic ca- 
reer had ended he was constant in his visits to England. From 
the beginning to the end of his connection of the Saturday Club, 
therefore, his associates profited by his vivid memory of pic- 
turesque Europe, his extraordinary intimacy with foreign lan- 
guages and literatures, and, in the last years of his life, by the 
rich social Intimacies with all that was best In that London life 
in which he took such keenly human enjoyment. 

It was inevitable that Lowell should compare the table-talk 
to which he had listened and contributed in England with the 
conversations of his old friends of the Club. If we keep in mind 
the quality of the chosen New Englanders of Lowell's day, and 
remember the local loyalty of the author of "A Certain Con- 



jfames Russell Lowell 7 7 

descenslon in Foreigners," we need not be surprised at the pref- 
erence which Lowell expressed. His words written from London 
to Charles E. Norton in 1883 are well known: "I have never 
seen civilization at so high a level in some respects as here. In 
plain living and high thinking, I fancy we have, or used to have, 
the advantage, and I have never seen society on the whole as 
good as I used to meet at the Saturday Club." He had already 
written to Longfellow in 1880: "I hope the Club still persists. 
I have never found such good society and don't expect it." 

Leslie Stephen, whose intimacy with Lowell dated from a visit 
to Elmwood in 1863, has made an interesting remark upon one 
characteristic of the Saturday Club circle: — 

"Lowell said that he had never seen equally good society in 
London. Colonel Higginson observes that Holmes and Lowell 
were the most brilliant talkers he ever heard, but suggests a 
qualification of this comparison. 'They had not,' he said, 'the 
London art of repression,' and monopolized the talk too much. 
They could, he intimates, overlook the claims of their inter- 
locutors. He once heard Lowell demonstrating to the author of 
Uncle Tom's Cabin that Tom Jones was the best novel ever writ- 
ten; while Holmes was proving to her husband, the divinity pro- 
fessor, that the pulpit was responsible for all the swearing. Dr. 
and Mrs. Beecher Stowe, it is implied, must have been reduced to 
ciphers before they could be the passive recipients of such doc- 
trine." 

Leslie Stephen adds: "The 'art of repression,' I fancy is very 
often superfluous in London. ... A society which included all 
the best scholars and men of genius within reach of Boston had 
abundance of the raw material of talk. They might be compared 
in point of talent even with the men who met Johnson at the 
'Turk's Head' and certainly had as great a variety of interests 
in men and books. They had, it would seem, fewer jealousies, or, 
as the sneerer would put it, were readier for mutual admiration, 
and such admiration, when it has a fair excuse, is the best security 
for forming the kind of soil in which the flower of talk grows spon- 
taneously." 

Lowell's attachment to the members of the Saturday Club 



7 8 "The Saturday Club 



circle is not, of course, to be measured merely by his few direct 
references to the Club itself. His affection for individual mem- 
bers like Norton is known to every reader of his letters, and his 
poems contain tributes to Longfellow, Agassiz, Whittier, and many 
other of his associates. These verses, printed elsewhere in this 
sketch of the history of the Club, need no additional comment 
here. The explanation of his central place in the famous circle is 
after all very simple: he was a most lovable man. 

That there were reserves in his subtle and complex nature no 
one knew better than his Cambridge friends. Yet his character 
was known to all. Its essential Puritanism had withstood the 
strain of his "storm and stress" period in the 1840's; his faith in 
his countrymen and in the ideals of a free democracy had been 
tested and ennobled by the agony of the Civil War; and during 
his years of foreign residence as a representative of his country 
his old associates knew how flawless and proud was his patriotism. 
His career had served to illustrate his known character; and the 
reputation which his prose and verse had won in England seemed 
to his old associates only a fit recognition of the learning, the wit, 
and the fine imagination which had been familiar to them from 
the first. Their pride in Lowell's cosmopolitan achievements was 
thus a natural sequence of their personal affection for one of the 
friendliest of men. Edward Everett Hale, who had known Lowell 
since his college days, once remarked that none of the reminis- 
cences and biographies of Lowell had done justice to his unselfish- 
ness and constant generosity: "It seemed enough for him to know 
that another man was In need for him to find out how to relieve it. 
I have some very interesting letters which show the tact with 
which his generosity enabled him to help men who were working 
their way through college and whom he meant to help somehow or 
other." 

This homely local tribute may be set side by side with the 
closing paragraph of the illuminating letter of Leslie Stephen to 
Norton, which is now printed as an appendix to Lowell's Letters: — 

"As I try to call back the old days, I feel the inadequacy of 
attempted description, and the difficulty of remembering the 
trifling incidents which might speak more forcibly than general 



yames Russell Lowell 7 9 

phrases. But I have one strong impression which I can try to 
put into words. It is not of his humour or his keen literary sense, 
but of his unvarying sweetness and simplicity. I have seen him 
in great sorrow, and in the most unreserved domestic intimacy. 
The dominant impression was always the same, of unmixed 
kindliness and thorough wholesomeness of nature. There did 
not seem to be a drop of bitterness in his composition. There was 
plenty of virtuous indignation on occasion, but he could not help 
being tolerant even towards antagonists. He seemed to be always 
full of cordial good-will, and his intellectual power was used not to 
wound nor to flatter, but just to let you know directly on occa- 
sion, or generally through some ingenious veil of subtle reserve, 
how quick and tender were his sympathies, and how true his sense 
of all that was best and noblest in his surroundings. That was 
the Lowell whom I and mine knew and loved ; and I think I may 
say that those to whom he is only known by his books need not 
look far to discover that the same Lowell is everywhere present 
in them." 

Dr. Holmes told a friend that he went to Elmwood to see Lowell 
a short time before he died. He found him lying on his couch 
reading. To the Doctor's affectionate questions as to his feelings 
he answered: "Oh, I suppose I'm in pain; I always am more or 
less, but look here [holding up his book], I've been reading Roh 
Roy. I suppose it may be for the fortieth time, but it is just as 
good as when I read it first." When Dr. Holmes went home he 
got out his Roh Roy, but in vain; he could not get interested and 
wondered how his friend could. No anecdote could be more illu- 
minating as to the essential difference in taste between these two 
old men. Lowell remained to the end a "Romanticist" and 
Holmes an "Augustan." 

After Lowell had passed away. Dr. Holmes wrote to Lady 
Harcourt, the daughter of Motley, these touching words about 
his own sense of solitude: — 

Boston, ist November, 1891. 
Since Lowell's death, I have felt my loneliness more than 
ever. I feel as if all the world were falling away around me. At 



8o The Saturday Club 

the Saturday Club, yesterday, there was not a single member, 
except myself, of the time when your father was of us at the table. 
Our old friend Judge Hoar was laid up with rheumatism, and I 
was the only relic of the past. I went to see Whittier while I was 
in the country and had a pleasant hour with him. But we both 
feel that for us the show is pretty nearly over. The green curtain 
is beginning to show its wrinkles at the top and must be down 
before long. Lowell is deeply lamented and sadly missed. 

But the most perfect expression of wistful longing for Lowell's 
companionship is a poem published by Longfellow in 1878, while 
his fellow-poet was serving his country as Minister in Madrid. 
Read to-day, it reveals not merely the affection of those who were 
admitted to Lowell's intimacy during his lifetime, but also the 
"thoughts unspoken " of our own contemporaries as they pass the 
house where Lowell was born and where he died: — 

THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD 

Warm and still is the summer night, 

As here by the river's brink I wander; 
White overhead are the stars, and white 

The glimmering lamps on the hillside yonder. 

Silent are all the sounds of day; 

Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets. 
And the cry of the herons winging their way 

O'er the poet's house in the Elmwood thickets. 

Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass 

To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes, 

Sing him the song of the green morass. 

And the tides that water the reeds and rushes. 

Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern, 

And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking; 

For only a sound of lament we discern. 
And cannot interpret the words you are speaking. 

Sing of the air, and the wild delight 

Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold you, 

The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight, 

Through the drift of the floating mists that infold you; 



yames Russell Lowell 8 1 

Of the landscape lying so far below, 

With its towns and rivers and desert places; 
And the splendor of light above, and the glow 

Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces. 

Ask him if songs of the Troubadours, 

Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter, 
Sound in his ears more sweet than yours, 

And if yours are not sweeter and wilder and better. 

Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate. 

Where the boughs of the stately ehns are meeting. 

Some one hath lingered to meditate, 
And send him unseen this friendly greeting; 

That many another hath done the same. 

Though not by a sound was the silence broken; 

The surest pledge of a deathless name 

Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken. 

B. P. 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 

In a well-known passage about Boston written by Dr. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, the friend and biographer of Motley, there is 
a humorous life-history of a typical Bostonian of that opulent and 
conventional social world into which Motley was born. The 
Doctor remarks blandly: — 

"What better provision can be made for mortal man than such 
as our own Boston can afford its wealthy children? A palace on 
Commonwealth Avenue or Beacon Street; a country-place at 
Framingham or Lenox; a seaside residence at Nahant, Beverly 
Farms, Newport, or Bar Harbor; a pew at Trinity or King's 
Chapel; a tomb at Mount Auburn or Forest Hills; with the pros- 
pect of a memorial stained window after his lamented demise, — 
is not that a pretty programme to offer a candidate for human 
existence ? " 

In writing that passage he doubtless had no thought of his 
friend, whose variations from the conventional type are at least 
as striking as his conformity to it. But in the preface to A Mortal 
Antipathy, Dr. Holmes sketches the career of Motley, whose me- 
moir he had just been writing, in a single felicitous paragraph: — 

"I saw him, the beautiful bright-eyed boy with dark waving 
hair; the youthful scholar, first at Harvard, then at Gottingen 
and Berlin, the friend and companion of Bismarck; the young 
author making a dash for renown as a novelist and showing the 
elements which made his failures the promise of success in a larger 
field of literary labour; the delving historian, burying his fresh 
young manhood in the dusty alcoves of silent libraries, to come 
forth in the face of Europe and America as one of the leading 
historians of the time; the diplomatist, accomplished, of capti- 
vating presence and manners; an ardent American, and in due time 
an impassioned and eloquent advocate of the cause of freedom; 
reaching at last the summit of his ambition as minister at the 
Court of St. James. All this I seemed to share with him as I 




^fZju^- 




yohn Lothrop Motley 83 

watched his career from his birthplace in Dorchester, and the 
house in Walnut Street where he passed his boyhood, to the palaces 
of Vienna and London. And then the cruel blow which struck 
him from the place he adorned, the great sorrow that darkened 
his later years; the invasion of illness, a threat that warned of 
danger and, after a period of invalidism, during a part of which 
I shared his most intimate daily life, the sudden, hardly unwel- 
come, final summons. Did not my own consciousness migrate or 
seem, at least, to transfer itself into this brilliant life history, as 
I traced its glowing record?" 

It is evident from these words that none of the original mem- 
bers of the Club made a more vivid personal impression upon their 
contemporaries. We must glance first at a few of the prosaic 
facts of Motley's youth. The son of a prosperous merchant, 
Thomas Motley, and the grandson of the Reverend John Lothrop, 
he was born in Dorchester, April 15, 18 14, but the family soon 
removed to Walnut Street, Boston. The boy was excessively 
delicate and high-spirited, fond of Cooper and Scott, of plays 
and declamation, was gifted in languages, and seems to have been 
of a fastidious and somewhat supercilious disposition. He learned 
German in George Bancroft's school at Northampton, and en- 
tered Harvard at the age of thirteen in the class of 183 1, being the 
youngest man in that class. He roomed for a while with Thomas 
G. Appleton, later a fellow-member of the Saturday Club, and 
was greatly admired by another classmate, Wendell Phillips, who 
was perhaps one of the first to point out young Motley's singular 
resemblance to Lord Byron — a resemblance which Lady Byron 
herself, in after years, often mentioned to Motley. He was grad- 
uated without special scholarly distinction, and the rules of the 
Phi Beta Kappa Society had to be stretched a little In order to 
elect him. For two years after graduation he studied In Berlin 
and Gottlngen, and became an Intimate friend of his fellow-student 
Bismarck. After his return from Europe In 1834, he studied law, 
married Mary Benjamin, and published In 1839 an unsuccess- 
ful novel, MortorCs Hope. Failure though the book proved. Dr. 
Holmes thought that "In no other of Motley's writings do we get 
such an inside view of his character, with its varied impulses, its 



84 T'he Saturday Club 

capricious appetites, its unregulated forces, its impatient grasp for 
all kinds of knowledge." 

In 1 841, Motley was appointed Secretary of Legation in St. 
Petersburg, though he served for a few months only. His first his- 
torical writing, as it happens, was an article on Russia and Peter 
the Great, in the North American Review for October, 1845. In the 
next year he began to collect materials for a history of Holland, 
but soon paused to write another novel, Merry Mounts which was 
at least better than his first, and to serve a year in the Massachu- 
setts House of Representatives. 

Then came Motley's famous interview with Prescott, who had 
himself intended to write the story of Philip the Second of Spain, 
but who generously encouraged the younger man to enter his 
field, much as Irving, years before, had surrendered the subject 
of the Conquest of Mexico to Prescott. A letter from Motley 
to William Amory on Prescott's death in 1859 tells the whole 
story. Here are the concluding words: — 

"Had the result of that interview been different, — had he dis- 
tinctly stated, or even vaguely hinted, that it would be as well if 
I should select some other topic, or had he only sprinkled me with 
cold water of conversational and commonplace encouragement, 
— I should have gone from him with a chill upon my mind, and, 
no doubt, have laid down the pen at once; for, as I have already 
said, it was not that I cared about writing a history, but that I 
felt an inevitable impulse to write one particular history. 

"You know how kindly he always spoke of and to me; and the 
generous manner in which, without the slightest hint from me, 
and entirely unexpected by me, he attracted the eyes of his hosts 
of readers to my forthcoming work, by so handsomely alluding 
to it in the Preface to his own, must be almost as fresh in your 
memory as it is in mine. 

"And although it seems easy enough for a man of world-wide 
reputation thus to extend the right hand of fellowship to an un- 
known and struggling aspirant, yet I fear that the history of lit- 
erature will show that such instances of disinterested kindness are 
as rare as they are noble." 

From 1 85 1 to 1856 Motley lived abroad with his family, work- 



yohn LjOthrop Motley 85 

ing in the archives at Berlin, Dresden, The Hague, and Brussels, >^ 
in search of material for his Rise of the Dutch Republic. He was 
too good an American not to be conscious of his isolation. In a 
letter to his father, dated Dresden, December 23, 1852, he refers 
to this, and incidentally alludes to a visit he had just received 
from a young student of music who was afterward to become a 
member of the Club: — 

"The fact is, no interest is felt in America or American insti- 
tutions among the European public. America is as isolated as 
China. Nobody knows or cares anything about its men, or its 
politics, or its conditions. It is, however, known and felt among the 
lower classes, that it is a place to get to out of the monotonous 
prison house of Philistines, in which the great unwashed of Europe 
continue to grind eternally. Very little is known of the country, 
and very little respect is felt for it, but the fact remains that Europe 
is decanting itself into America, a great deal more rapidly than is 
to be wished by us. . . . Please to say to Mr. Cabot that his young 
friend and kinsman, Mr. Higginson,^ presented himself not long 
ago to us. He is a very honest, ingenuous, intelligent lad, who is 
taking a vacation on account of his eyes." 

A letter to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes from Brussels, in No- 
vember, 1853, shows how steadily Motley was now toiling: — 

"Whatever may be the result of my labours, nobody can say 
that I have not worked hard like a brute beast; but I do not care 
for the result. The labour is in itself its own reward and all I 
want." 

But that there was a fascination in his task is evidenced by a 
well-known passage from his second book, the History of the 
United Netherlands : — 

"Thanks to the liberality of many modern governments of 
Europe, the archives where the state secrets of the buried cen- 
turies have so long mouldered are now open to the student of 
history. To him who has patience and industry, many mysteries 
are thus revealed which no political sagacity or critical acumen 
could have divined. He leans over the shoulder of Philip the Second 
at his writing-table, as the King spells patiently out, with clpher- 

1 Major Henry Lee Higginson, our valiant and beneficent member. 



86 T^he Saturday Club 

key in hand, the most concealed hieroglyphics of Parma, or Guise, 
or Mendoza. He reads the secret thoughts of 'Fabius' [Philip II] 
as that cunctatlve Roman scrawls his marginal apostilles on each 
despatch; he pries Into all the stratagems of Camlllus, Hortenslus, 
Mucins, Julius, Tullius, and the rest of those ancient heroes who 
lent their names to the diplomatic masqueraders of the sixteenth 
century; he enters the cabinet of the deeply pondering Burghley, 
and takes from the most private drawer the memoranda which 
record that minister's unutterable doubtings; he pulls from the 
dressing-gown folds of the stealthy, soft-gliding Walslngham the 
last secret which he has picked from the Emperor's pigeon-holes 
or the Pope's pocket, and which not Hatton, nor Buckhurst, nor 
Leicester, nor the Lord Treasurer Is to see: nobody but Elizabeth 
herself; he sits invisible at the most secret councils of the Nassaus 
and Barneveldts and Buys, or pores with Farnese over coming 
victories and vast schemes of universal conquest; he reads the 
latest bit of scandal, the minutest characteristic of king or minis- 
ter, chronicled by the gossiping Venetians for the edification of 
the Forty; and after all this prying and eavesdropping, having 
seen the cross-purposes, the briblngs, the windings In the dark, 
he Is not surprised If those who were systematically deceived did 
not always arrive at correct conclusions." 

In those words there is the thrill of professional pride felt by 
the successful historian, but in 1856, when the Dutch Republic 
was at last ready for the publisher. It was difficult for Motley to 
find a publisher. But Chapman agreed to print the London edi- 
tion, at the author's expense, and the Harpers undertook an 
American edition. Motley's letter to his father from Rome In 
May, 1856, bears interesting witness to the significance which 
was then attached to the critical opinion of Edwin P. Whipple: — 

"I perceive that the Harpers have published the Dutch Repub- 
lic 3.1 \a.s,l. No doubt they are correct judges of the correct time; 
but I must say that I should have liked to have had it published 
in time to allow a review in the April number of the North Ameri- 
can. You say nothing of this in your letter. Have you observed 
in one of Mary's letters a request to send a copy to Sam Hooper 
and to E. P. Whipple.^ The latter Is one of the most brilliant 



yohn Lothrop Motley 87 

writers in the country, as well as one of the most experienced 
reviewers." 

But before Motley returned to Boston, in the autumn of that 
year, it was evident that the reviewers and the general public 
were united in one huge chorus of praise for the Dutch Republic. 
No such American triumph in the field of history had been seen 
since Prescott's first volume, published twenty years before. 
French, Dutch, German, and Russian translations swiftly followed 
one another. 

It was during the winter of 1856-57, immediately after his\ 
victory, that Motley became a member of the Saturday Club. > 
Apparently his formal membership antedates by a few months v 
that of Holmes, for he writes to the Doctor during a visit to 
England, in September, 1857: "Remember me kindly to Lowell 
and Agassiz and Felton, Longfellow, Tom Appleton, and all the 
members of our Club, which I hope you have regularly joined by 
this time." 

Motley's correspondence, from 1857 onward, has many agree- 
able references to the Saturday Club. He was in England from 
1858 to 1 861, working on the United Netherlands^ but Dr. Holmes 
Writes him in February of the latter year: "The Club has flourished 
greatly, and proved to all of us a source of the greatest delight. 
I do not believe there ever were such agreeable periodical meet- 
ings in Boston as these we have had at Parker's. We have missed 
you, of course, but your memory and your reputation were with 
us." 

In March Longfellow was requested to congratulate him, in 
the name of the Club, upon the success of his new volumes : — 

Cambridge, March 14, 1861. 
My dear Motley : — 

At the last dinner of our "Saturday Club" Agassiz proposed 
that a friendly greeting be sent you, with our hearty congratula- 
tions on the success of your new History. The proposition passed 
by acclamation, and I was requested to write to you to that effect, 
which I do with great pleasure, adding in my own behalf that no 
one rejoices in your new literary triumph more than I do, unless 



88 T^he Saturday Club 

it be your father. It was always a delight to me to see his face, 
and now more so than ever. 

I think you have added ten happy years to his life. 

Henry W. Longfellow. 

Motley returned to Boston shortly, and gives this pleasant 
picture of the Club in a letter to his wife: — 

" Saturday we had a delightful Club dinner. Agassiz, who was 
as delightful as ever, and full of the kindest expressions of ap- 
preciation and affection for Lily, and Holmes, who is absolutely 
unchanged, which is the very highest praise that could be given, 
— Lowell, Peirce, Tom Appleton, Dana, Longfellow, Whipple. 
There were three absent, Felton, Emerson, and Hawthorne, and 
it says something for a club in which three such vacancies don't 
make a desolation." 

It was in this year of 1861 that President Lincoln appointed 
Motley Minister to Austria. He held that post for six years, was 
personally most popular in the highest circles of Vienna society, 
and performed his diplomatic duties punctiliously. No more ar- 
dent American ever represented us in a foreign country. Motley 
felt terribly at times the strain of the Civil War, but had, as he 
wrote to his mother in 1862, "an abiding faith in the American 
people; in its courage, love of duty, and determination to pursue 
the right when it has made up its mind." His letters to Holmes 
and to Thomas G. Appleton contain many affectionate references 
to the Saturday Club. One quotation must sufRce. He writes to 
Holmes in February, 1862: "Always remember me most sincerely 
to the Club, one and all. It touches me nearly when you assure 
me that I am not forgotten by them. To-morrow is Saturday and 
the last of the month. We are going to dine with our Spanish col- 
league. But the first bumper of the Don's champagne I shall 
drain to the health of my Parker House friends." 

Twice during his stay in Vienna Motley had the happiness of 
receiving visits from his old friend Bismarck, whose notes in 
English to Motley are too delightful to be passed over: — 



yohn Lothrop Motley 89 

Berlin, April 17, 1863. 
I never pass by old Logler's House, in the Friedrich-strasse, 
without looking up at the windows that used to be ornamented 
by a pair of red slippers sustained on the wall by the feet of a 
gentleman sitting in the Yankee way, his head below and out of 
sight. I then gratify my memory with remembrance of "Good old 
colony times when we were roguish chaps." ^ 

Berlin, May 23, 1864. 
Why do you never come to Berlin? It is not a quarter of an 
American's holiday journey from Vienna, and my wife and me 
should be so happy to see you once more in this sullen life. When 
can you come, and when will you ? I swear that I will make out the 
time to look with you on old Logier's quarters, and drink a bottle 
with you at Gerolt's, where they once would not allow you to put 
your slender legs upon a chair. Let politics be hanged, and come 
to see me. I promise that the Union Jack shall wave over our house 
and conversation and the best old hock shall pour damnation upon 
the rebels. 

Motley's reply to one of these letters contains the following 
paragraph: — 

My dear old Bismarck: — 

. . . You asked me in the last letter, before the present one, 
"if we knew what we were fighting for" — I can't let the ques- 
tion go unanswered. We are fighting to preserve the existence of 
a magnificent commonwealth — and to annihilate the loathsome 
institution of negro slavery. If men can't fight for such a cause 
they had better stop fighting furthermore. Certainly since man- 
kind ever had a history and amused themselves with cutting each 
other's throats, there never in the course of all the ages was better 
cause for war than we have. 

It must be remembered that Motley's two letters to the Lon- 
don Times m 1870, setting forth the necessity of maintaining the 

^ In 1888, Prince Bismarck, in his great speech to the German Reichstag, quoted this 
song, adding at the same time that he had learnt it from his "dear deceased friend, John 
Motley." 



90 The Saturday Club 

Union at all costs, had made a deep impression upon thinking Eng- 
lishmen. Our associate, William Everett, who was in England 
at that time, said of those letters after Motley's death: "No un- 
official, and few official, men could have spoken with such au- 
thority, and been so certain of obtaining a hearing from English- 
men. Thereafter, amid all the clouds of falsehood and ridicule 
which we had to encounter, there was one lighthouse fixed on a 
rock to which we could go for foothold, from which we could not 
l5e driven, and against which all assaults were impotent." 

But perhaps the most striking evidence of Motley's perception 
of the true spirit of America is to be found in his letter of condo- 
lence to Mrs. Lincoln after the President's assassination: — 

Vienna, May 1st, 1865. 

... I am afraid to trust myself to speak of him, lest, even to 
you, I should seem over-enthusiastic in his praises. But as I have 
never hesitated whilst he was living to express on all proper occa- 
sions my sense of his character, I do not see why I should be silent 
now, when he has become one of the blessed martyrs of history. 
It has always seemed to me that he was the good angel of our 
country. I had never the honour of much personal Intercourse 
with him, but on the very first Interview I was Impressed with 
that great characteristic of his, the noblest with which a man can 
be endowed, a constant determination to do his duty. A single 
phrase of his inaugural address of this year — "firmness in the 
right as God gives us to see the right" — Is as good a summary of 
his own characteristics from his own lips as could be made by a 
lengthened eulogy. . . . 

No country has ever been blessed with a more virtuous chief 
magistrate. Most painfully have I studied almost his every act 
and utterance during the momentous period in which his name 
has been Identified with that of his country, and day by day 
has my veneration Increased for his Integrity, his directness of 
purpose, his transparent almost childlike sincerity and truth. So 
much firmness has rarely been united with such tenderness of 
heart. And ... It was an additional source of pride for us all to 
watch how his intellect seemed daily to expand and to become 



yohn Lothrop Motley 9 ^ 

more and more robust as the load upon it in such an unparalleled 
epoch became ever more severe. And this is the surest test of a 
great mind. Truly in his case statesmanship might seem an easy 
lesson to learn, for with him "simple truth was utmost skill," yet, 
how much nobler a world it would be if all rulers and lawgivers 
had studied in the same school. . . . 

The story of Motley's resignation from his Vienna post is told 
at length by Holmes and need not be repeated here. Secretary 
Seward undoubtedly failed to understand Motley's temperament. 
On the other hand, Motley's quick temper probably forced himj 
into positions which a more steadily poised man might havej 
avoided. President Johnson seems to have had little understand- ! 
ing of Motley's sensitiveness and little appreciation of the value* 
of his services at the Court of Austria. 

The two final volumes of the History of the United Netherlands 
appeared in 1868. In June of that year Motley returned to Boston 
and lived at No. 2 Park Street. 

A passage from Whipple's Recollections of Eminent Men gives 
a vivid picture of the impression now made by Motley upon his 
old friends of the Club: — 

"In the summer of 1868 he returned with his family to Boston, 
and was warmly greeted by all his old friends. He appeared to 
be in the full vigour of bodily and mental health, and his powers 
of conversation were such as surprised the most redoubtable 
talkers of that city. . . . 

"Perhaps, as Dr. Holmes has described the Club generally in a 
note to his biography, it may not be an indecorum to lift the veil 
from one of its dinners in which he bore a main part in the con- 
versational achievements. Motley laid down some proposition, 
which Holmes, of course. Instantly doubted, and then Lowell 
plunged in, differing both from Motley and Holmes. A trian- 
gular duel ensued, with an occasional ringing sentence thrown 
in by Judge Hoar for the benevolent purpose of increasing a com- 
plication already sufficient to task the wit and resource of the 
combatants. In ordinary discussion one person is allowed to talk 
at least for a half or a quarter of a minute before his brother ath- 



92 "The Saturday Club 

letes rush in upon him with their replies; but in this debate all 
three talked at once, with a velocity of tongue which fully matched 
their velocity of thought. Still, in the incessant din of voices, 
every point made by one was replied to by another or ridiculed 
by a third, and was instantly followed by new statements and 
counter-statements, arguments and counter-arguments, hits and 
retorts, all germane to the matter, and all directed to a definite 
end. The curiosity of the contest was that neither of the combat- 
ants repeated anything which had been once thrown out of the 
controversy as irrelevant, and that while speaking all together the 
course of the discussion was as clear to the mind as though there 
had been a minute's pause between statement and reply. The dis- 
cussion was finished in fifteen minutes; if conducted under the 
ordinary rules of conversation, it would have lasted a couple of 
hours, without adding a new thought, or fact, or stroke of wit 
applicable to the question in debate. The other members of the 
Club looked on in mute wonder while witnessing these feats of 
intellectual and vocal gymnastics. If any other man than Judge 
Hoar had ventured in, his voice and thought would have been 
half a minute behind the point which the discussion had reached, 
and would therefore have been of no account in the arguments 
which contributed to bring it to a close. On this occasion I had no 
astronomical clock to consult; but, judging by the ear, I came to 
the conclusion that in swiftness of utterance Motley was two- 
sixteenths of a second ahead of Holmes, and nine-sixteenths of a 
second ahead of Lowell." 

Perhaps it was at one of these Club dinners in 1868 that Mot- 
ley made the playful remark which Holmes thought "one of the 
three wittiest things that have been said in Boston in our time": 
"Give me the luxuries, and I will dispense with the necessaries, of 
life." 

In 1869 Motley was appointed Minister to England by Presi- 
dent Grant. This great honour proved to be the tragedy of Mot- 
ley's public career. Shortly after his arrival in England he ex- 
pressed himself to Lord Clarendon, the British Foreign Secretary, 
in terms that were disapproved by Mr. Fish, our Secretary of 



yohn Lothrop Motley 93 

State. This incident seemed to be closed, however, when, to 
Motley's astonishment, on the 1st of July, 1870, Secretary Fish 
requested his resignation. As Motley did not resign, he was re- 
called in November. It is unnecessary here to go into the details 
of this much-discussed quarrel between Mr. Motley and his 
Government. Motley's friendship with Sumner, who had fallen 
under the displeasure of General Grant, seemed to have something 
to do with his recall. But Mr. Fish explained the recall in these 
terms: "The reason for Mr. Motley's removal was found in con- 
siderations of state. He misrepresented the Government on the 
Alabama question, especially in the two speeches made by him 
before his arrival at his post." 

That Motley's friendship for Sumner seemed to the Saturday 
Club circle to be an element in the unfortunate situation is clear 
from some interesting reminiscences of Governor Jacob D. Cox, 
of Ohio, in his Atlantic article, entitled "How Judge Hoar ceased 
to be Attorney-General." It is quoted here as the only instance 
on record when " the eminent men of the Saturday Club attempted, 
as a body, to use their influence at Washington." 

"General Sherman was in Boston at the time of my visit and 
I was invited, with him, to dinner, by the Saturday Club, of which 
Judge Hoar was a member. Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and 
Holmes were all there, and I need not say it was an occasion to 
remember. It only concerns my present story, however, to tell 
what occurred just before we parted. Mr. Longfellow was presid- 
ing and, unexpectedly, I found that he was speaking to me, in 
the name of the Club. He said that they had been much disturbed 
by rumours, then current, that Mr. Motley was to be recalled 
from England, on account of Senator Sumner's opposition to the 
San Domingo Treaty. They would be very far, indeed, from seek- 
ing to influence any action of the President which was based on 
Mr. Motley's conduct in his diplomatic duties, of which they knew 
little and could not judge; but they thought the President ought 
to know that if the rumour referred to was well founded, he would, 
in their opinion, offend all the educated men of New England. 
It could not be right to make a disagreement with Mr. Sumner 
prejudice Mr. Motley by reason of the friendship between the two. 



94 T'he Saturday Club 

"I could only answer that no body of men had better right to 
speak for American men of letters and that I would faithfully 
convey the message. 

"On my return to Washington, I first made known to Mr. Fish 
the duty that had been committed to me: not only did he inter- 
pose no objection to it; he expressed an earnest wish that it might 
change the President's purpose. 

"I took an early opportunity of reporting to General Grant 
what the eminent men of the Saturday Club said to him. His 
only reply was : ' I made up my mind to remove Mr. Motley before 
there was any quarrel with Mr. Sumner.' This he said in an im- 
patient tone, as if repelling interference." 

Whatever may have been the precise cause of Motley's removal, 
it was a shock from which he never fully recovered. Yet he set 
himself to work stubbornly upon his final task, the Lije and 
Death of John of Barneveld. He followed with the keenest interest 
the new political developments in Europe resulting from the War 
of 1870. One of his letters to Bismarck, written from London just 
before his recall, and urging Bismarck to make moderate terms 
with France, has become very famous because of the profane com- 
ment which Prince Bismarck scribbled upon the margin of the 
letter — a comment that has gained fresh interest since 1914: — 

London, 9th September, '70. 
... I am not authorized or disposed on this occasion to ex- 
press the sense of our Government or people. But, as I believe, 
he would be an injudicious friend of France who should counsel 
her to proceed as if — without radical change in the fortunes of 
men — she could help accepting such honourable terms as Prussia 
might dictate, so he would be a sincere friend of Germany who 
should modestly but firmly suggest that the more moderate the 
terms on the part of the conqueror at this sup'reme moment, the 
greater would be the confidence inspired by the future,^ and the 
more secure the foundations of a durable peace, and the more 
proud and fortunate the position and character of United Germany. 

^ The words ''damn confidence" were added by Prince Bismarck in the margin of the 
letter. 



yohn Lothrop Motley 95 

. . , The world is shuddering at the prospect of the possibility of 
a siege of Paris and assault, and all the terrible consequences of 
taking such a city by storm. 

I cannot bear the thought that the lustre of what is now the 
pure and brilliant though bloody triumph of Germany should be 
tarnished by even a breath. ... 

Accept the warmest good wishes and congratulations of your 
sincere friend as of old, 

J. L. Motley. 

Motley's last book, John of Barneveld, appeared in 1874. His 
wife died on the last day of that year, and from that time onward 
Motley seemed to his friends a broken man. He visited Boston 
once more in 1875, but his daughters were now married in Eng- 
land, and he soon returned thither. He lingered in failing health, 
until March, 1877. Motley was buried with his wife in KensaK 
Green Cemetery. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of 
this American, whose stock ran back to the "good old colony 
times," are all English. His oldest grandson, Richard Brinsley 
Sheridan, — a direct descendant of the dramatist, — fell in the 
British Army during the Boer War. It will perhaps be thought 
fitting, therefore, to let an Englishman utter the final word about 
the achievements of our American historian. In a sermon preached 
at Westminster Abbey on June 3, 1877, Dean Stanley said: — 

"We sometimes ask what room or place is left in the crowded 
temple of Europe's fame for one of the Western World to occupy. 
But a sufficient answer is given in the work which was reserved to 
be accomplished by him who has just departed. So long as the 
tale of the greatness of the House of Orange, of the siege of Ley- 
den, of the tragedy of Barneveld, interests mankind, so long will 
Holland be indissolubly connected with the name of Motley, in 
the union of the ancient culture of Europe, with the aspirations of 
America which was so remarkable in the ardent, laborious, soar- 
ing soul that has passed away." 

B. P. 



BENJAMIN PEIRCE 

Our great mathematician and astronomer was born in Salem in 
1809. "The humanities," and mathematics, which led him to the 
infinite divine, came to him through his parentage, for his father, 
whose name he bore, first scholar in his class at Cambridge, became 
the librarian and the historian of the College, and the brother 
of his mother, Lydia Nichols, was a mathematician. Nathaniel 
Bowditch, translating and annotating the volumes of Laplace's 
Mechanique Celeste^ as they appeared, made use of young Peirce 
on the work, when he graduated. Years later, after Bowditch's 
death, Peirce completed this task. It was said that not more than 
twelve men In Europe, or three in America, could read and ap- 
preciate his work. 

After teaching for a time at Mr. Cogswell's remarkable school 
at Northampton, where, as pupils, several of our members re- 
ceived their early education, Peirce was called to Harvard as tutor, 
and became, in 1832, HoUis Professor of Mathematics and Natural 
Philosophy. Ten years later he became Perkins Professor of 
Astronomy and Mathematics. He held a position in the Univer- 
sity for nearly half a century. 

Of the great mathematician as an instructor several of his pu- 
pils who ventured on the higher planes of the science have written. 
These were youths who, though they could follow him but a few 
steps in that rarefied atmosphere, had the privilege of a glimpse 
now and then into shining infinities wherein this giant sped 
rejoicing on. 

Colonel Thomas Wentworth HIgglnson wrote: "He gave us 
his 'Curves and Functions,' in the form of lectures; and some- 
times, even while stating his propositions, he would be seized 
with some mathematical inspiration, would forget pupils, notes, 
everything, and would rapidly dash off equation after equation, 
following them out with smaller and smaller chalk-marks into the 
remote corners of the blackboard, forsaking his delightful task 
only when there was literally no more space to be covered, and 
coming back with a sigh to his actual students. There was a great 



Benjamin Peine 97 

fascination about these interruptions; we were present, as it 
seemed, at mathematics in the making; it was Uke peeping into a 
necromancer's cell, and seeing him at work; or as if our teacher 
were one of the old Arabian algebraists recalled to life. The less 
we knew of what was going on, the more attractive was the en- 
thusiasm of the man; and his fine face and impressive presence 
added to the charm." 

Another pupil, Mr. Frank B. Sanborn, bore this personal tes- 
timony to the Master, a few years later: "To most young men 
Peirce, in his own mathematical demesne, was formidable or 
quite inaccessible, the warder of an enchanted tower, whose 
banner bore a strange device (being interpreted, it said Excelsior)^ 
whose speech was foreign, and who paced his battlements with a 
far-looking manner, — 

' His thoughts commercing with the skies.' 

But when this wizard stepped down from his post, crossed his moat, 
and opened his garden gate, nothing could be more attractive 
than the vistas and plantations he opened to our view. I remem- 
ber as but yesterday, though it is well-nigh thirty years ago, the 
blank confusion with which the ill-instructed youth confronted his 
problems and the Sphinx who gave them out, and the thrill of 
enthusiasm in the same youth when the range and scope of the 
mathematical sciences was flashed upon his imagination in the 
fascinating lectures, of which he gave us only too few. Few men 
could suggest more while saying so little, or stimulate so much 
while communicating next to nothing that was tangible and com- 
prehensible. The young man that would learn the true meaning of 
apprehension as distinct from comprehension^ should have heard 
the professor lecture, after reciting to him." 

Still another pupil, Mr. George A. Flagg, who, ten years later, 
elected the higher mathematical course, remembers Professor 
Peirce's manner to this small class as kind and genial, perhaps 
as respecting their hardihood in attempting this steep and rugged 
pathway, through baffling clouds, though leading to the stars 
and infinitely beyond. His talk was informal, often far above their 
heads. "Do you follow me.''" asked the Professor one day. No 



98 The Saturday Club 

one could say Yes. "Pm not surprised," said he; "I know of only 
three persons who could." At Paris, the year after, at the great 
Exposition, Flagg stood before a mural tablet whereon were in- 
scribed the names of the great mathematicians of the earth for 
more than two thousand years. Archimedes headed, Peirce closed 
the list; the only American. The arrangement of names here is 
exactly as on the tablet: — 

MATHEMATICIENS DISTINGUES 
archimede 

EUCLIDE 

SCIPIO FERREA 

CARDAN 

BERNOUILLI 

MERCATOR 

NAPIER 

WALLIS LAPLACE 

EULER d'aLEMBERT 

LAGRANGE 

CLAIRAUT 

TAYLOR 

FONTAINE 

DEMORGAN 

HERSCHEL 

LACROIX 

PLAYFAIR 

AIRY 

PEIRCE 

This honour of the Master delighted the pupil, and, on his re- 
turn,^he did not fail to carry the news to him; he had not heard it. 

To these testimonies I must add the human, pleasant memories 
of this wanderer in celestial galaxies, when he was a young pro- 
fessor, written in the Harvard Book,^ by Colonel Henry Lee, in 
1875: — 

^ Vol. I, chapter on "University Hall," among other amusing and kindly descriptions 
of the professors of other days. 



Benjamin Peine 99 

" Why we should have given him the diminutive name of ' Benny ' 
I cannot say, unless as a mark of endearment because he could 
fling the iron bar upon the Delta farther than any undergraduate; 
or, perhaps because he always thought the bonfire or disturbance 
outside the college grounds, and not inside, and conducted him- 
self accordingly. His softly lisped 'Sufficient' brought the blun- 
derer down from the blackboard with a consciousness of failure as 
overwhelming as the severest reprimand. There was a delightful 
abstraction about this absorbed mathematician which endeared him 
to the students, who hate and torment a tutor always on the watch 
for offences, and which confirmed the belief in his peculiar genius." 

Hon. Robert S. Rantoul in a recent letter has given me the fol- 
lowing reminiscences, especially interesting as showing the impor- 
tant relation of the Reverend Thomas Hill to Peirce: — 

"The famous experiment of the pendulum hung inside of 
Bunker Hill Monument from the top, to demonstrate the rota- 
tion of the earth, was all the rage in my day in College. We 
thought we had arrived at an explanation of it, which we dis- 
cussed together with much enthusiasm, until Professor Peirce 
volunteered one day to explain it. After that nobody thought 
he understood it at all. Dr. Andrew P. Peabody and Peirce 
began together as teachers in mathematics. Pelrce's pupils used 
to resort to Peabody for explanations. To send a beginner to 
Peirce to learn mathematics seemed like committing an infant 
child to a giant to learn to walk. The tradition obtained in my 
day that Peirce would, now and then, become obsessed with a 
new conceit of some kind, and In the heat of It would become so 
alarmed lest the discovery should escape him before he could re- 
duce it to writing, that he would rush to the livery-stable behind 
the church, hire a chaise, and make all haste to Waltham where 
the Reverend Thomas Hill was then settled. Peirce could not 
clearly describe to Hill just what was disturbing his mind, but 
Hill, who had no such original inspirations to trouble him, could 
better express In words the new proposition when at last he under- 
stood It. Hill would gradually fathom the mind of Peirce and, 
towards morning, send him home to Cambridge with his problem 
stated on paper in his pocket and his thoughts at rest." 



lOO 



The Saturday Club 



Fortunately for the boys of unmathematical mind, struggling 
through the compulsory mathematics of the two first years, they 
came, in the writer's day, under the instruction of Peirce's son 
James, who, clear and exacting in statement, could yet allow for 
their limitations and help them up the steps. There were gaps, 
too, for the father had written the textbook, and, as Rantoul said, 
"did not hesitate to over-ride Euclid ... in his condensed and 
simplified mode's of demonstration." When the anxious youth, 
worrying through his demonstration, at a step in the argument 
slighted by the father as absurdly trivial, fairly quoting the book, 
said, "It may be easily seen how" — the shrill and precise voice 
of the son came in — '"''How is it easily seen.^*" and the faithfully 
memorized demonstration collapsed, and a clearer-minded pupil 
was called upon to show the bridge. 

For authority was nothing to Peirce. He took his own path up 
the mountain. The world was stirred over Leverrier's wonderful 
work which led to the discovery of Neptune as the causer of per- 
turbations in planetary orbits. Peirce went over the enormous 
calculations of Leverrier and pronounced them inexact, and that 
the discovery of the planet was a fortunate accident. "When 
requested by Edward Everett, then President of the American 
Academy of Arts and Sciences, to suppress the announcement of 
his results because no words could express the improbability of 
his statements, he could calmly reply, 'But it is still more improb- 
able that there can be an error in my calculations,' and time 
proved that he was right." 

The force and judgment in a great emergency of Professor Peirce 
are shown in this anecdote given me by one who was present: — 

"Jenny Lind's last concert of the original series, given un- 
der the auspices of Phineas T. Barnum, was given at the hall 
over the Fitchburg Railroad Station. Tickets were sold without 
limit, — many more than the hall could hold, — and there was 
every prospect of a riot. Barnum had taken the precaution to 
leave for New York. I got about one-third up the main aisle, but 
could get no farther. Just ahead of me was Professor Peirce. The 
alarm was increasing. The floor seemed to have no support under- 
neath, but to hang over the railroad track by steel braces from 



Benjamin Peine 



lOI 



the rafters above. Would it hold? The air was stifling and windows 
were broken, with much noisy crashing of glass, in order to get 
breath. Women were getting uneasy. And there was no possibility 
of escape from a mass of human beings so packed together. We 
knew, from the conductor's baton, that the orchestra was playing, 
but no musical sound reached us. Professor Peirce mounted a 
chair. Perfect silence ensued as soon as he made himself seen. He 
stated, very calmly, certain views at which he had arrived after a 
careful study of the situation. The trouble was at once allayed. 
Jenny Lind recovered her voice and the concert went on to its 
conclusion." 

Peirce's zeal and determination — his intensity of feeling made 
him on occasions even formidable — recall Shakspeare's phrase 
about the Roman hero, — 

"He struck Corioli like a planet." 

This mathematician, not content with the equation of ellipses 
and parabolas, longed to see their shining demonstrations on the 
background of space. "His lectures on comets," said one of his 
friends, " so interested his Boston audiences that the Cambridge Ob- 
servatory soon rose, a witness to his forcible persuasion," as, years 
later, when head of the Coast Survey, his striking personality, and 
strong, convincing statement, won appropriations from Congress 
which raised that service to its proper usefulness and eminence. 

Agassiz came to Cambridge in 1847, and was Peirce's over- 
the-way neighbour in Quincy Street. They were good friends. It 
has been well said that "Peirce was a transcendentalist in mathe- 
matics as Agassiz was in zoology, and a certain subtile tie of affin- 
ity connected these two men." Mr. Norton spoke of them as "po- 
litical men in the University administration, who worked together 
for the advancement of the scientific interest," up to that time 
almost ignored, or considered by some of the rulers almost an 
impertinence. Felton was another valued friend and neighbour. 

Mr. Emerson once wrote: "To the culture of the world an 
Archimedes, a Newton, is indispensable: so Nature guards them 
by a certain aridity. If these had been good fellows fond of 
dancing, port, and clubs, we should have had no Theory of the 



I02 



The Saturday Club 



Sphere, and no Principia." But here was an exception. The Pro- 
fessor was a reader of the best poetry; he delighted in the theatre 
and in charades and private theatricals. The Quincy and Kirk- 
land Street neighbours often chartered an omnibus in which they 
lurched through "the Port" and over the Boston cobblestones to 
see Warren at the Museum, or Booth at the Boston Theatre, or 
hear Fanny Kemble. Natura in minimis; he watched his boys' tops 
and published an analytical solution of their motion. He wrote 
on the probabilities of the three-ball game in billiards. A tradi- 
tion passed current among graceless students that when the Pro- 
fessor sat down to a game of cards with one of his sons, the actual 
playing was dispensed with, for the young man, after studying his 
hand, made a rapid calculation on the Doctrine of Chances, then- 
would smile cheerfully and say, "Hand over your money, old man." 
A pleasant reminiscence of the family life is given by his daughter, 
another instance of Leasts and Mosts in this remarkable man. 
Before breakfast he always went to walk with his younger chil- 
dren, now a delightful memory to them. This man, who could 
divine and see remotest suns in space, amused his little ones by 
allowing no pin to hide from his eyes in the dust of the sidewalk; 
— " although he never seemed to be looking for them, he would 
suddenly stoop to pick up a pin. He had various 'pincushions'; 
one was the trunk of an elm tree near our gate, others on Harvard 
and Brattle Streets. Those on Quincy and Kirkland Streets are 
still standing." At home, his daughter says, "He was such a 
great, big ray of Light and Goodness, always so simple, cheerful 
and showing more than amiability, that his great power did not 
seem to assert itself." She recalls seeing her "father and Agassiz 
talking over some bad news from the front during the War of the 
Rebellion" — Peirce had many valued friends on both sides — 
"with tears running down their cheeks. The awe of that I re- 
member, but not the bad news that was the cause." 

In the catalogue of the Harvard Library may be found a card 
thus inscribed — 

Ben Yamen's SONG OF GEOMETRY 

Sung by the Florentine Academy at the Coronation of the Queen, 
Degraded into prose by Benjamin Peirce 



Benjamin Peine 103 

The book thus catalogued proves to be Professor Peirce's Address 
before the American Association for the Advancement of Science 
in 1853. It is bound, and inscribed "To Cornelius the Floren- 
tine." "The Florentines" probably were an informal neighbour- 
hood Club, "The Queen" some particularly agreeable lady, and 
"Cornelius" certainly was Professor Cornelius Conway Felton. 
However imaginary the "singing" may have been, any one who 
will read this joyous paean on the perfect beauty of harmonious 
law running through all that the eye and mind of man can con- 
template will find it a nobler poem than the vers libre offered him 
as such to-day.^ Students who, with no taste for mathematics, yet 
struggled through to analytical geometry, might at last find 
beauty and Illumination in the curve which they plotted on paper 
from a formidable equation, and later rejoiced in reading the 
Master's Ideality in the Physical Sciences. Like Pythagoras, 
Pelrce taught that everything owes its existence and consistency 
to the harmony which he considered the basis of all beauty, and 
found music in the revolving spheres, "Computation is not bar- 
ren when it supplies subsistence," said Peirce, "but the computa- 
tion of the geometer . . . has a loftier aspiration. It provides 
spiritual nourishment; hence it is life itself, and is the worthy occu- 
pation of an immortal soul. The arithmetical formula considered 
as an end is the embodiment of fact, and isolated fact is as worth- 
less as the idle gossip of the parlour; . . . whereas facts combined 
into formulae, and formulae organized into theory, penetrate the 
whole domain of physical science and ascend to the very throne 
of ideality." 

Benjamin Peirce's breadth recalls what Professor Kendrick^ 
said, — "Plato having in his twentieth year fallen under the in- 
fluence of Socrates, he thenceforth devoted himself to philoso- 
phy as that essence and soul of harmony of which rhythmical 
numbers are but the sensuous and shadowy embodiment." 

Mr. Rantoul ends his brief printed sketch of the great pro- 
fessor with this remarkable statement: "In 1870, he produced a 

* Throughout these pages verses of our poets have been introduced and I cannot resist 
appending to this sketch of the Master some portions of his noble prose poem. — E. W. E. 

* Professor A. C. Kendrick, D.D., of Rochester University. 



I04 "The Saturday Club 

memoir, the manuscript lithographed and but a hundred copies 
made, so abstruse was the subject, — demonstrating that, while 
only three algebraic systems have, thus far, been developed and 
used in all the triumphant achievements of modern science, up- 
wards of seventy such are possible, and this number he fore- 
shadowed and classified. One flash like that lights up the horizon of 
intellectual vision, as the lightning lifts the cloud-veil of the mid- 
night's tempest." 

It is easy to see what the Club gained in quality by gathering 
in Peirce and Agassiz. Bridges between this pair and the poets 
and writers on the one hand, and the men of law and affairs on the 
other, were soon found. To both they brought shining new knowl- 
edge from sky, earth, and ocean, and from them received the like, 
but stamped in a different mint. 

When the Club first gathered, their astronomer could tell them 
the beautiful results of his study for the past three years. He 
had shown that old Saturn could not sustain his golden fluid 
rings, but their weight was borne up by his throng of satellites 
in their encircling dance. 

Peirce did not readily join, unless moved, in general conver- 
sation. He is said to have been devoid of wit and humour. But 
he was an interesting talker to those near him. On occasion he 
could show great intensity of feeling, yet he could be genial. In 
his later years his hair and full beard were of a strong iron-gray. 
His eyes, deep-set under bushy brows, seemed dark and searching. 
He cared so much for his many friends in the South that he was 
hostile to the anti-slavery movement which was then bringing on 
the inevitable war. But after the fall of Fort Sumter he took a 
deep interest in the war. He gave largely to the Sanitary Commis- 
sion. Peirce had been much at Washington, in the ante-bellum 
times, first, as consulting astronomer to the Coast Survey, after- 
wards as its chief. Admiral Davis, a principal promoter of the 
quality and improvement of this service, received great help 
from Peirce. They were close friends, and had married sisters. 
The Nautical Almanac and Ephemeris^ under their charge, sur- 
prised Europe with its excellence. Note this praise of Peirce for 
a virtue not too common, — "He was willing to be esteemed for 



Benjamin Peine 105 

less than he had done, and could join most heartily in the praise 
of others who perhaps owed their impulse to him." 

His daughter relates that Professor Peirce asked himself, "What 
is man?" Then answered, "What a strange union of matter and 
mind! A machine for converting material into spiritual force." 
When he read the denunciations of science by clergymen, he ex- 
claimed: "I cannot conceive a more monstrous absurdity. How 
can there be a more faithless species of infidelity than to believe 
that the Deity has written his word upon the material universe 
and a contradiction of it in the Gospel?" 

In the year of Peirce's death, the orator at the centennial cele- 
bration of the Phi Beta Kappa spoke of him as "the largest 
natural genius . . . God has given to Harvard in our day, whose 
presence made you the loftiest peak and farthest outpost of more 
than mere scientific thought; the magnet, with his twin, Agassiz, 
which made Harvard for forty years the intellectual Mecca of 
forty States." Robert Rantoul, in his eulogy, said: "It is not 
given to us — it is given to but few men of any generation — to 
roam those Alpine solitudes of science to which his genius reached. 
But we may rejoice for him that, finding his country among the 
lowest of civilized nations in astronomical achievement, he left 
her among the first, — and that he has been able to do more than 
any American of our day to show how Nature may be read by 
the same mind as a problem and as a song." 

E. W. E. 

EXTRACTS FROM THE "SONG OF BEN YAMEN" 
{Benjamin Peirce) 

Geometry, to which I have devoted my life, is honoured with the title 
of the Key of Sciences; but it is the Key of an ever open door which 
refuses to be shut, and through which the whole world is crowding, to 
make free, in unrestrained license, with the precious treasures within, 
thoughtless both of lock and key, of the door itself, and even of Science, 
to which it owes such boundless possessions, the New World included. 
The door is wide open and all may enter, but all do not enter with equal 
thoughtlessness. There are a few who wonder, as they approach, at the 
exhaustless wealth, as the sacred shepherd wondered at the burning 
bush of Horeb, which was ever burning and never consumed. Casting 



io6 T'he Saturday Club 

their shoes from off their feet and the world's iron-shod doubts from their 
understanding, these children of the faithful take their first step upon 
the holy ground with reverential awe, and advance almost with timidity, 
fearful, as the signs of Deity break upon them, lest they be brought face 
to face with the Almighty. . . . 

The Key! it is of wonderful construction, with its infinity of combina- 
tion, and its unlimited capacity to fit every lock. ... It closes the mas- 
sive arches which guard the vaults whence the mechanic arts supply the 
warehouses of commerce, and it opens the minute cabinet in which the 
Queen of the Fairies protects her microscopic jewels; it is the great 
master-key which unlocks every door of knowledge and without which 
no discovery which deserves the name — which is law, and not isolated 
fact — has been or ever can be made. Fascinated by its symmetry the 
geometer may at times have been too exclusively engrossed with his 
science, forgetful of its applications; he may have exalted it into his idol 
and worshipped it; he may have degraded it into his toy . . . when he 
should have been hard at work with it, using it for the benefit of man- 
kind and the glory of his Creator. . . . But ascend with me above the 
dust, above the cloud, to the realms of the higher geometry, where the 
heavens are never clouded; where there is no impure vapour, and no de- 
lusive or imperfect observation, where the new truths are already arisen, 
while they are yet dimly dawning on the world below; where the earth 
is a little planet; where the sun has dwindled to a star; where all the stars 
are lost in the Milky Way to which they belong; where the Milky Way 
is seen floating through space like any other nebula; where the whole 
great girdle of nebulae has diminished to an atom and has become as 
readily and completely submissive to the pen of the geometer, and the 
slave of his formula, as the single drop, which falls from the clouds, in- 
stinct with all the forces of the material world. Try with me the pre- 
cision of measure with which the Universe has been meted out; observe 
how exactly all the parts are fitted to the whole and to each other, and 
then declare who was present in the council-chamber when the Lord laid 
the foundations of the Earth. 

Begin with the heavens themselves; see how precisely the motions of 
the firmament have endured through the friction of the ages; observe 
the exactness of the revolutions of the stars; if these mighty orbs cannot 
resist the law, what can the atom do? ... A slight defect of motion is just 
detected; it is slight, very slight, but it is unquestionable. We dare not 
hide it out of sight. Science must admit this triumph of art and be true, 
even if the stars are false. The names of "fixed star" and "pole star" 
must not be suffered to impose upon the trusting world. . . . Geometry! 
To the rescue! Geometry is at her post, faithful among the faithless. 



Benjamin Peirce 107 

The pen is at work, the midnight oil consumed, the magic circles drawn 
by the wise men of the East, and the wizard logarithm summoned from 
the North. . . . The defect of motion is transformed into the discovery of 
a new law. It becomes the proof of the \sic\ atmosphere to bend the ray 
from its course as it shoots down, laden with the image of Arcturus and the 
sweet influence of the Pleiades. It becomes the proof of the moving light, 
of the unseen planet, and of the invisible stars and hence a new proof of 
the precision of the measure. Honour to Bradley, to Bessel, to Adams, 
and to Leverrier! The stars are not false — question them as you may, 
they give the same evidence, and do not contradict each other's testi- 
mony. They tell us that ours is not the central sun, and that we are mov- 
ing in the procession of the stars; they tell us that we move among the 
others toward the constellation of Hercules so that, while we grow in wis- 
dom, we approach the strong man's house. They tell us that we are mov- 
ing at such a rate that the distance from star to star is but just a good 
geological day's journey; and hereby they confirm the story which is 
written upon the crust of the globe and prove that the earth and skies 
have been measured out with the same unit of measure. 

Descend from the infinite to the infinitesimal. Long before . . . 
observation had begun to penetrate the veil under which Nature has 
hidden her mysteries, the restless mind sought some principle of power 
strong enough and of sufficient variety to collect and bind together all 
parts of a world. This seemed to be found, where one might least expect 
it, in abstract numbers. Everywhere the exactest numerical proportion 
was seen to constitute the spiritual element of the highest beauty. It was 
the harmony of music, and the music of song; the fastidious eye of the 
Athenian required the delicately curved outlines of the temple in which he 
worshipped his goddess to conform to the exact law of the hyperbola, 
and he traced his graceful features of her statue from the repulsive 
wrinkles of Arithmetic. Throughout nature the omnipresent beautiful 
revealed an all-pervading language spoken to the human mind, and to 
man's highest capacity of comprehension. By whom was it spoken? 
Whether by the gods of the ocean, or the land, by the ruling divinities 
of the sun, moon, and stars, or by the dryads of the forest and the 
nymphs of the fountain, it was one speech and its written cipher was 
cabalistic. The cabala were those of number, and even if they transcended 
the gemetric ^ skill of the Rabbi and the hieroglyphical learning of the 
priest of Osiris, they were, distinctly and unmistakably, expressions of 
thought uttered to mind by mind; they were the solutions of mathe- 
matical problems of extraordinary complexity. 

* Gemetria, a cabalistic system consisting in the substitution for a word of any other 
the numerical values of whose letters give the same sum. (Century Dictionary.) 



io8 T'he Saturday Club 



The bee of Hymettus solved its great problem of isoperimetry on the 
morning of creation. . . . The very spirits of the winds, when they were 
sent to carry the grateful harvest to the thirsting fields of Calabria, did 
not forget the geometry which they had studied in the caverns of iEolus 
and of which the geologist is daily discovering the diagrams. 



SAMUEL GRAY WARD 

It has been shown in the Initial chapter of this chronicle how his 
much-valued younger friend, Ward, made Emerson's long cher- 
ished hope of a club attractive and practicable. Ward's tactful 
suggestions of including in the, at first, small membership some 
brilliant persons in whom the social gift prevailed over the specu- 
lative or reforming, and of the Importance of a dinner, put the 
project into a form which the accident of Woodman's Informal 
lunches at once made a fact. 

Ward was a man of good birth and breeding, with artistic 
tastes and gifts, and practical business talent; these struggled 
in him for the mastery. His father, Thomas Wren Ward, was a 
merchant in Boston with his home In Park Street, where Samuel 
was born in 1 8 17. At Round Hill School, where he went later 
than John Forbes and Tom Appleton, but probably when Ben- 
jamin Pelrce was the mathematical teacher there, he had the 
great good fortune, for a boy, of having classical studies well pre- 
sented, so that he could then, and more In after years, find joy 
in them. In his old age he wrote, "One cannot have mastered 
the Latin Grammar at any early age without a speaking ac- 
quaintance, at least, with Virgil and Horace and Cicero, a single 
line of one of whom makes all educated men kin and establishes 
a free-masonry like no other." 

While he was at Harvard he lived In the house of Professor and 
Mrs. Farrar, a centre of culture and refinement. Two fortunate 
chances befell him. There he met Margaret Fuller; the eager young 
girl of astonishing scholarship and Intellectual power, not attrac- 
tive, and an Invalid, became his friend. He said he owed to her 
a great debt for introduction to the new world of literature and 
thought, and an Intellectual impulse that was of great value to 
him. Mr. Ward's other and greater good fortune In the Farrar 
home was the meeting there a young visitor. Miss Anna Barker. 
A few years later she became his wife, and, though she became an 
invalid, her always beautiful presence was spared to him until they 
were both very old. 



I lO 



The Saturday Club 



After graduating, young Ward went abroad for more than a 
year. He had the luck to travel first with the Farrars, then to go 
to Italy with Mr. George Ticknor in his carriage; also to study 
the best art and the noble landmarks of the past, with natural 
aesthetic sense and eager zeal. 

On his return he began life as a broker, but the financial de- 
pression of 1837, continuing long, gave him a reason for leaving 
State Street to try his fortune and strengthen his constitution by 
farming. He had a passion for gardening and manfully ploughed 
and planted in the beautiful surroundings of Lenox, then a simple 
and remote village. He had married Anna Barker before the move 
to Berkshire. They loved the country, but for both of them it was 
struggling against manifest destiny to live a rustic life, far hid- 
den away from cultivated society. They were born to live in it 
and adorn it. 

In a letter, written by Mr. Norton to his old friend in the last 
years of their lives, is this pleasant recollection: "As, the other 
day, I was passing the Farrar house [on Cambridge Common] 
with which you were once so familiar, I recalled that the first time 
I ever saw you was one Sunday morning as I was going to church 
with my mother. As we passed the gate she said to me, 'There 
is young Mr. Ward going up the steps, to see the beautiful Miss 
Anna Barker.' I suppose the little incident impressed itself on 
my memory, because the beautiful Miss Barker had been at our 
house and had made me, a boy of ten or twelve, captive by her 
charms." No wonder, for young or old who had the privilege of 
meeting Mrs. Ward during the next sixty years felt, in varying 
degrees, the spell of her beauty which, being intrinsic, shone out 
undimmed by long years of invalidism. Instead of becoming 
thereby self-absorbed, she kept until the end the rare power of 
lending herself with sure, winning sympathy to those whom she 
received by her bedside. The untutored and shy young people 
found their tongues. They left her room astonished, happier and 
higher than when they went. 

The natural, masterful brusqueness and rather exacting social 
standards of her husband were surely sweetened by her. He had 
a way of correcting crude behaviour or obvious remarks by young 



Samuel Gray Tf^ard 



III 



people which left a sting, but the next time they met him his 
affectionate smile could make them forget anything. 

In spite of the beauty of Lenox, the young pair, nurtured in so- 
ciety and craving art and letters, must have felt the barrenness of 
a remote country village in the long winters. His wife said, in 
their middle life, "When I first saw Sam Ward (he was perhaps 
twenty-one) he was a prematurely old man, but he grew young, 
and has been growing younger ever since." Mr. Ward left Lenox, 
he said, "because he found a hole in his pocket that could be 
mended in no other way," but the real reason was that his father 
needed him. 

The son, in his last year, wrote for his grandchildren an account 
of his life. The part telling of his business, and how he was drawn 
into it, to his surprise and even dismay, gives an interesting nar- 
rative which may be stated very briefly as follows. Bills on Lon- 
don commanded cash all over the world. The Barings were the 
most important of the firms who supplied these, and their credit 
in all foreign parts was a proverb. Joshua Bates was brought up 
in a Boston counting-room, was a member of the firm, and he ar- 
ranged that Mr. Thomas Wren Ward, as their agent in America, 
should supply credit by bills on London to American merchants. 
The basis of this convenience was personal confidence. The Bar- 
ings required that merchants taking credit from them should take 
none from other bankers. They never opened accounts where it 
was thought necessary to take security. 

The venture proved a great success under the older Ward, but 
in 1850, when he had held the agency for twenty-two years, he 
felt he had a right to retire. A suitable successor was thought of, 
but something prevented. As Samuel Ward was working in his 
Lenox garden, he saw, like an apparition approaching, his father's 
factotum, and on the moment foresaw his own doom. Some one 
asked Mr. Bates how he could confide such large affairs to this 
untried young man. He simply said, "I know the stock, and am 
sure it will be all right." The father and son had been in close 
confidence. 

Samuel Ward's instincts were literary and artistic, and he loved 
the country. Yet the Lenox experiment had shown the disad- 



112 



The Saturday Club 



vantages of remoteness. As a matter of duty and affection he 
yielded to his father's wish for him and straightway showed him- 
self a sound and capable business man. The firm's great credit 
business doubled and tripled during the twenty years after he 
succeeded to the management. 

Yet one must believe that in those years, when confined and 
tired, the mood returned often which inspired his poem, written 
anonymously, in the Dial in the days of his short business trial 
before the Lenox venture. 

THE SHIELD ^ 

The old man said, "Take thou this shield, my son, 
Long tried in battle, and long tried by age, 
Guarded by this, thy fathers did engage. 
Trusting to this, the victory they have won," 

Forth from the tower Hope and Desire had built. 
In youth's bright morn I gazed upon the plain, — 
There struggled countless hosts, while many a stain 
Marked where the blood of brave men had been spilt. 

With spirit strong I buckled to the fight, — 
What sudden chill rushes through every vein? 
Those fatal arms oppress me — all in vain 
My fainting limbs seek their accustomed might. 

Forged were those arms for men of other mould; 
Our hands they fetter, cramp our spirits free; 
I throw them on the ground, and suddenly 
Comes back my strength, returns my spirit bold. 

I stand alone, unarmed, yet not alone; 
Who heeds no law but what within he finds; 
Trusts his own vision, not to other minds; 
He fights with thee. Father, aid thou thy son. 

And yet Ward, in turn, placed a Pegasus "in pound" in the 
next generation. After all, his unsuspected business talent and 
success had been a source of some gratification to him. 

Mr. Ward made several contributions in prose or verse for the 
Dial^ and the following passage from a letter written to him by 
^ Published in the Dxal about 1843, 



Samuel Gray Ward 1 1 3 

Emerson in 1843 shows that he had promised to write for the next 
number a paper (on poetry?) in dialogue form: "Your letter and 
the fine colloquy make me happy and proud. I shall print it, to 
be sure, every syllable, and the good reader shall thank you, or 
not, as God gives him illumination." A few years after their first 
acquaintance, in July, 1840, Emerson wrote: "The reason why I 
am curious about you is that with tastes which I also have, you 
have tastes and powers and corresponding circumstances which 
I have not and perhaps cannot divine, but certainly we will not 
quarrel with our companion, for he has more root, subterranean 
or aerial, sent out into the great Universe to draw his nourishment 
withal. The secret of virtue is to know that, the richer another 
is, the richer am I; — how much more if that other is my friend." 
For Ward was one of Emerson's brightest " Sons of the morning," 
and though far from setting in eclipse, like many of these, and by 
Emerson always loved and valued, yet the morning ideal was 
perhaps a little dimmed by life's experiences. I remember that 
he said in his mature life, "Show me a radical over forty, and I 
will show you an unsound man." 

Mr. Ward was a man remarkable for his many-sidedness, an 
able man of affairs, public-spirited citizen, possessed of talent, 
social position and aplomb, accomplished, masterful, an intelli- 
gent and hospitable householder, a good but sparing writer, wide 
and critical reader in various languages, well versed in art and 
an admirable amateur draughtsman. The elder Ward was 
Treasurer of the Boston Athenaeum, then the small oasis in which 
Art was struggling to light in Massachusetts, and the son, who 
had, in his eighteen months in Europe, fed his eyes and soul in 
the galleries, with inborn taste thus instructed, brought home 
in his portfolios the best prints and drawings then attainable. 

As Ward was stirred by the courage and elevation of thought 
of his older friend; Emerson in his quiet country life was very 
sensible of the charm of the social culture and manners of Ward 
and his wife, and was glad to avail himself of his knowledge of art 
and discernment in collecting. There was always a certain spell 
felt by the quiet scholar when such people were in company with 
him and afterward, yet his ancestry and his solitary genius showed 



114 "The Saturday Club 



him that his path was not theirs. His poem "The Park" records 
this feeUng: — 

"The prosperous and beautiful 

To me seem not to wear 

The yoke of conscience masterful 

Which galls me everywhere," etc. 

Ward sent his portfolios to Concord for Emerson to enjoy, telling 
him to keep a delicate copy in some reddish medium of the relief 
of Endymion in the Capitoline Museum. It was thus acknowl- 
edged : — 

"I confess I have difficulty in accepting the superb drawing 
which you ask me to keep. In taking it from the portfolio I take 
it from its godlike companions to put it where It must shine alone. 
... I have been glad to learn to know you through your mute 
friends [the drawings]. They tell me very eloquently what you 
love. . . . This beautiful Endymion deserves to be looked on by 
instructed eyes.^ . . . 

" I conceive of you as allied on every side to what is beautiful and 
inspiring, with noblest purposes in life and with powers to execute 
your thought. What space can be allowed you for a moment's 
despondency.? ... In this country we need whatever Is generous 
and beautiful in character, more than ever, because of the general 
mediocrity of thought produced by the arts of gain. . . . Friends, 
it is a part of my creed, we always find; the Spirit provides for 
itself. If they come late, they are of a higher class." 

In 1847 Mr. Emerson notes of his friend in his journal: "Ward 
has aristocratical position and turns it to excellent account; the 
only aristocrat who does. ... I find myself interested that he 
should play his part of the American gentleman well, but am con- 
tented that he should do that instead of me, — do the etiquette 
instead of me, — as I am contented that others should sail the 
ships and work the spindles." 

Ward with his family lived in Louisburg Square for many 
years, and had a pleasant summer home in Canton, once the home 
of the great mathematician Bowditch, where still stood his tower 
with a travelling observation-dome. On the death of Thomas 

^ The Endymion hung in Emerson's parlor all through his lifetime and still hangs there. 



Samuel Gray TVard 115 

Wren Ward in 1858, his son became the sole representative of the 
Barings in this country until, nine years later, his brother, George 
Cabot Ward, wag associated with him. Just before this occurred, 
the task fell on Mr. Sam Ward of effecting the purchase of Alaska 
from Russia for the United States; the price paid being seven and 
one half million dollars. About this time the firm moved to New 
York. Early in the war of secession Mr. Sam Ward, in company 
with other patriotic supporters of the cause of Union and Free- 
dom, felt the need of, and founded, the Union Club there; also with 
good Bostonians, many of them members of the Saturday Club, 
established the Union Club here. More than that, he took a prin- 
cipal part in superintending the alterations of the Lawrence and 
Lowell houses on Park Street from the combination of which the 
Union Clubhouse was formed. The Saturday Club has, now for 
many years, dined there. Later, Mr. Ward took an active interest 
in establishing the Nation newspaper, whose high and independ- 
ent tone had a great influence in enlightening the people and 
spreading and sustaining a patriotism pure of mere partisanship. 
Many persons have confounded our Samuel Gray Ward, because 
of his later living at Newport, with Mr. Samuel Ward, a resident 
there, brother of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, but with quite other sym- 
pathies and attitude in the war, as his sister in her noble poem 
"The Flag" scrupled not to show. 

When the Back Bay began to be reclaimed and the Public 
Garden emerged from the muddy water, Mr. Ward was one of 
the pioneer residents. He built a stately house. Number One 
Commonwealth Avenue, next to that of Mr. Joshua Bates on 
Arlington Street, and, not long after, a beautiful summer house 
on the cliffs at Newport weaned his family from the Canton home. 

Mr. Ward's love for the best French literature and habitual 
entertainment at his home of guests and correspondents from the 
Continent, perhaps was a cause of his rather epigrammatic little 
utterances over which he often chuckled. He liked to let the guest 
talk, and then, instead of sustained comment or argument, would 
interject a shrewd or witty sentence. He would have made a good 
diplomatist. He was very fond of a work by Brillat de Savarin, 
La Physiologie du Gout, to which he introduced Emerson. The 



1 1 6 "The Saturday Club 

latter, a propos of this, noted in his journal; "Longfellow avoids 
greedy smokers. A cigar lasts one hour; but is not allowed to 
lose fire. 'Give me the luxuries, the necessities may take their 
chance'; and the appendix to this, is Sam Ward's rule, that the 
last thing an invalid is to give up, is, the going out to places of 
amusement, — the theatre, balls, concerts, etc. And Sir George 
Cornwall Lewis's saying, that ' Life would be tolerable, if it were 
not for the pleasures.' Ward said, and admitted, the best things. 
He had found out, he said, why people die; it is to break up their 
style." 

In 1870 Mr. Ward withdrew from active business, went abroad 
with his family and lived there, mainly in Rome, for nearly three 
years, but yielded, on his return, to the urgency of the Barings 
that he should again superintend their affairs here. He built a 
house in Lenox. After his final withdrawal from business, he made 
his home in Washington, coming northward in the summers. Of 
course he came seldom to the Club, for he had outlived all but one 
or two of his early friends. 

Emerson, in a letter to Mrs. Ward acknowledging her gift of 
her husband's photograph, says: "In this picture he who knows 
how to give to every day its dues, wears a seriousness more be- 
coming than any lights which wit or gaiety might lend to other 
hours." 

Mr. Norton's daughter speaks of the "fortunate circumstance 
of a late ripening friendship, chiefly expressed through correspond- 
ence, with Mr. Ward in Washington. The intercourse between 
them was like that of two seafarers who had sailed In youth from 
the same port, and, meeting near the end of life, sat down to 
bridge the intervening years and weigh the new against the old." 

Mr. Ward grew feeble, but his faculties seemed hardly im- 
paired during his seven years of life in a new century. He died in 
November, 1907, having been a member of the Saturday Club 
which he had helped into existence, for fifty years. 

E. W. E. 



EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE 

American readers who are familiar with the life of Walter Bage- 
hot, the English Essayist, will be struck by a curious parallelism 
between his literary career and that of Edwin Percy Whipple. 
Neither of these forceful essayists enjoyed an academic educa- 
tion. Both were forced by circumstances into the business of 
banking. Each was a passionate reader, with a gift of communi- 
cating enthusiasm for books, and each carried into his judgment 
of literature the shrewd, practical sense of a man of affairs. Both 
wrote about books and authors In the familiar tone of spirited 
conversation, avoiding, as one instinctively avoids in casual talk 
with a chance companion upon a railway journey, anything like 
preciosity or subtlety. Healthy, natural, vivid human intercourse 
gives the key of the style of both essayists. The following brief 
passage from Whipple dealing with the credulity of men of busi- 
ness as compared with the credulity of men of letters, is precisely 
in Bagehot's vein: — 

"When I first had the happiness to make his [Emerson's] ac- 
quaintance I was a clerk in a banking-house. . . . The first thing 
that struck me was the quaint, keen, homely good-sense which 
was one of the marked characteristics of the volume; and I con- 
trasted the coolness of this transcendentalist, whenever he dis- 
cussed matters relating to the conduct of life, with the fury of 
delusion under which merchants of established reputation seemed 
sometimes to be labouring in their mad attempts to resist the 
operation of the natural laws of trade. They, I thought, were 
the transcendentallsts, the subjective poets, the Rousseaus and 
Byrons of business, who in their greed were fiercely ' accommo- 
dating the shows of things to the desires of the mind,' without 
any practical insight of principles or foresight of consequences. 
Nothing more amazed me, when I was a clerk, recording trans- 
actions in which I incurred no personal responsibility, than the 
fanaticism of capitalists in venturing their money in wild specu- 
lations. The willingness to buy waste and worthless eastern lands; 



1 1 8 T^'he Saturday Club 

the madness of the men who sunk their millions in certain rail- 
roads; and the manias which occasionally seize upon and passion- 
ately possess business men, surpassing in folly those fine frenzies 
of the imagination which are considered to lead to absurdities 
belonging to poets alone, — all these facts early impressed me with 
the conviction that a transcendentalist of the type of Emerson 
was as good a judge of investments on earth as he was of invest- 
ments in the heavens above the earth." 

Whipple was seven years older than Bagehot. He was born in 
Gloucester in 1819, the birth-year of Lowell and Story among the 
Saturday Club group, and of many other persons of literary dis- 
tinction, such as George Eliot, Julia Ward Howe, Walt Whitman, , 
and Charles A. Dana. At fifteen he became a clerk in a Salem 
bank, and at eighteen he began to serve a Boston banking-house 
in the same capacity. He was already an omnivorous reader. At 
twenty-two he wrote a review of the First Series of Emerson's 
essays, in which he called Emerson, for the first time, "our Greek- 
Yankee," a phrase which has been borrowed by countless critics. 
He won a general reputation by a brilliant article on Macaulay in 
the North American Review in 1843, at the age of twenty-four. It 
was like Macaulay's own triumph with his essay on Milton, and the 
young American bank-clerk had already learned the trick of the 
Scotchman's clear, ringing, sure, — and alas, sometimes, cock-sure, 
— style. When the Merchants' Exchange of Boston established 
its reading-room and library, Whipple became its superintendent. 
Harvard gave him the honorary degree of M.A. in 1848, and the 
University of Vermont in 1851. His Lowell Institute lectures in 
1859 on the Literature oj the Age of Elizabeth became a widely read 
and most useful book. When the Saturday Club was organized, 
there was no question as to his standing as a representative man 
of letters, and his genial personal qualities, then and always, made 
him a welcome guest in every literary circle. His survey of Ameri- 
can Literature^ written for the Centennial year of 1876, shows him 
at the maturity of his powers. It was a propos of this book that his 
friend Whittier characterized him as, "with the possible exception 
of Lowell and Matthew Arnold, the ablest critical essayist of our 
time." During the next ten years, however, the decay of the old 



Edwin Percy JVhipple 1 1 9 

Lyceum system, his increasing ill-health, and the growing popu- 
larity of other authors whose fame he himself had helped to es- 
tablish, withdrew Whipple more and more from notice, and 
when he died in his modest home in Boston in 1886, his name had 
less significance with the public than it had enjoyed thirty years 
before. 1 

There are reasons, no doubt, for his decline In popularity as a 
critical essayist. Poe, whose brief critical essays were practically 
disregarded by Whipple and his friends, has steadily gained rec- 
ognition in this field, as in others. Arnold certainly holds his 
own. Lowell's critical methods have had to sustain severe attack, 
but when certain qualifications have been made, his place in the 
foremost rank of American critics is not seriously questioned. Why 
has Whipple, whose critical work delighted and instructed a whole 
generation of his countrymen, been demoted? It must be ad- 
mitted, of course, that he lacked Poe's originality of perception, 
as he lacked Arnold's sound classical training, and Lowell's sheer 
cleverness, but a more obvious obstacle to the permanency of his 
influence is perhaps to be found in that oral method which was 
imposed upon him by the Lyceum system to which he largely 
owed his audience and his influence. His thought and his style 
were subdued to what they worked in, namely, the physical pres- 
ence of auditors who wished to be Instructed as to facts, guided 
in ethical judgments, and duly amused, all within the hour. In 
the preface to one of his volumes of addresses, Whipple touches 
gracefully and not without pathos upon the difficulty of his task. 
"The style," he confesses, "doubtless exhibits that perpetual 
scepticism as to the patience of audiences which torments the lec- 
turer during the brief hour in which he attempts to hold their at- 
tention." Whipple fulfilled his contract faithfully and admirably, 
but he could not perform Emerson's miracle of transmuting the 
oral material and method Into the stuff of permanent literature. 
He lectured excellently, for Instance, on Elizabethan literature, 
in which he was thoroughly read, but to compare these lectures 
with the lectures of Hazlitt or the essays of Lamb upon the same 
authors. Is to perceive Whipple's inescapable Lyceum quality. 
His books remain, at least for the greater part, lectures that once 



I20 



The Saturday Club 



served their day, the highly intelligent and capable service of a 
middleman, distributing to the general public the produce of other 
minds. That this interpretative criticism has its value, no one 
doubts, but the technical requirements of the speaker's platform 
limit its suggestiveness and its range. Thoreau, who heard Whipple 
lecture before the Concord Lyceum in December, 1847, wrote 
about it to Emerson, who was then in England, and incidentally 
put his finger upon one of Whipple's stylistic sins, namely, an 
over-fondness for the Macaulay trick of antithesis: — 

"We have had Whipple on Genius, — too weighty a subject 
for him, with his antithetical definitions new-vamped, — what it 
tj, what it is not^ but altogether what it is not ; cuffing it this way 
and cuffing it that, as if it were an Indian-rubber ball. Really it is 
a subject which should expand, expand, accumulate itself before 
the speaker's eyes as he goes on, like the snowballs which the boys 
roll in the streets, and when it stops, it should be so large that he 
cannot start it, but must leave it there." 

The Lyceum expert to whom Thoreau was writing could no 
doubt develop a theme like Genius and succeed somehow in 
"leaving it there," — as one leaves a mountain, — but Macaulay 
certainly could not, nor any of his mountain-moving disciples, 
with their incurable habit of saying "Be thou removed!" to 
things that will not budge. 

Whipple was only twenty-eight, however, when he failed to 
edify Thoreau, and in the next thirty years he performed, as we 
have seen, a singularly useful service in expounding and popu- 
larizing not only the great literature of the past, but also the work 
of his contemporaries. Certainly no member of the Saturday Club 
has ever been more loyally felicitous in characterizing the liter- 
ary work of his associates. His essay on Agassiz in 1857 and his 
Recollections of Agassiz after the latter's death, the essays on 
Hawthorne, Emerson, Prescott, Motley, Sumner, Andrew, and 
Lowell, are full of interesting personal anecdote, and illuminating 
characterizations. His essay on Emerson, for example, gives one 
of the best descriptions ever made of Emerson's voice and manner 
as a public speaker. Whipple's enthusiasm for his friends had no 
touch of envy. He knew their books thoroughly, and delighted to 



Edwin Percy Whipple 



121 



praise what he found praiseworthy. No small part of the popu- 
lar reputation enjoyed from i860 to 1880 by the Saturday Club 
group is due to the self-effacing activity of Whipple on thus inter- 
preting for the public the books of greater writers than himself. 

He was personally well liked by his fellow-members, as he de- 
served to be; an agreeable table-companion, who frankly enjoyed 
his food and particularly his wine, and never missed a dinner. 
His "radiant, playful wit" was commented upon by Emerson, 
and living members of the Club recall with pleasure his alert, 
slight figure, his mobile, benevolent merchant's face with its mag- 
nificent forehead, and his courteous demeanor. He appreciated 
the telling contrasts in character afforded by the earlier members, 
and twice, in his published essays, he went so far as to maintain 
that the Club was really "a society based on mutual repulsion." 
There is some designed hyperbole here, of course, but the point is 
so interesting in its bearing upon the usual theory of clubs that 
the passages must be quoted. 

In his Recollections of Agassiz he remarks: "He was the recog- 
nized head, the chairman, of a peculiar Boston Club, admission 
to which depended rather on antipathy than sympathy, as re- 
gards the character and pursuits of its members. It was ingen- 
iously supposed that persons who looked on all questions of science, 
theology, and literature from different points of view would be the 
very persons who would most enjoy one another's company once 
a month at a dinner-table. Intellectual anarchy was proclaimed 
as the fundamental principle of this new organization, or rather 
disorganization; no man could be voted in who had not shown by 
his works his disagreement with those who were to be associated 
with him; and the result was, of course, the most tolerant and 
delightful of social meetings. Societies based on mutual admira- 
tion had been tried, and they had failed; here was a society based 
on mutual repulsion, and It was a success from the start. The 
two extremes were Agassiz the naturalist and Emerson the tran- 
scendentallst; and they were the first to become intimate friends, 
— nothing could exceed the admiration of Agassiz for Emerson's 
intellectual and personal character. The other members agreed 
to disagree after a similar charming fashion, and the contact and 



122 



I'he Saturday Club 



collision of so many discordant minds produced a constant suc- 
cession of electric sparks both of thought and wit. Probably not 
even the club of which Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, and 
Goldsmith were members brought so many forcible individuals 
into such good-natured opposition, or afforded a fairer field for the 
display of varied talents and accomplishments. When they were 
all seated at one board, and the frolic hostilities of opinion broke 
out in the free play of wit and argument, of pointed assertion and 
prompt retort, the effect was singularly exhilarating. Indeed, there 
is no justification for a long dinner where the attraction is simply 
in the succession of choice dishes and the variety of rare wines. 
In all really good dinners the brain and heart are more active than 
the palate and the stomach." 

Again, in Whipple's admirable essay on "Motley the Histo- 
rian," he speaks of "the Saturday Club of Boston — an association 
composed of some fifteen or twenty persons, who were elected to 
membership on the ground that they were generally opposed to 
each other in mind, character, and pursuits, and that therefore 
conversation at the monthly dinner of the club would naturally 
assume quite an animated if not controversial tone. Motley de- 
lighted in this association, as it gave full play for the friendly col- 
lision of his own intellect with the intellects of others, — intel- 
lects of which some were as keen, bright, and rapid as his own." 

Whipple then goes on to describe a triangular duel of wit be- 
tween Motley, Holmes, and Lowell, which is quoted elsewhere 
in the present volume. 

Whipple's own good sayings were numerous. The best known, 
no doubt, is that recorded by Emerson in his journal, apparently 
after a dinner of the Club: "Whipple said of the author of Leaves 
of Grass that he had every leaf but the fig leaf." Dr. Bartol, in his 
funeral discourse upon Whipple, quotes another: "'I know,' said 
one to him, 'your idea of a public library; if you had a million 
dollars.' 'If I had the million,' Whipple answered, 'I should not 
have the idea.'" 

Dr. Bartol's tribute, which is now printed in the current edi- 
tion of Whipple's Recollection of Eminent Men, touches, in a very 
few words, the essence of his old friend's nature. He praises, 



Edwin Percy Whipple 123 

indeed, his quality as a critic, his "infallible divination of charac- 
ter," his aptness at distinctions, his disinterestedness and imparti- 
ality. But what chiefly impressed Dr. Bartol was Whipple's sweet- 
ness and modesty. "Never," he said, "has the community been 
addressed and instructed by a man in his temper more retiring 
and in his habit more retired. . . . He nestled like a timid bird in 
his home, among his kindred and companions, with his books, 
his children, and his mate. . . . He lived to do honour to others, 
and to forget himself in awarding to everybody else the meed of 
desert. . . . He had an eminent magnanimity. ... I never heard 
a word of envy from his lips; I never saw a spark of malice in his 
eye. He rejoiced in his comrade's superiority and success." To 
.have deserved such a characterization is achievement enough. 

B. P. 



HORATIO WOODMAN 

That Mr. Woodman's skill and tact brought the long desired 
Club into being has been clearly shown. Mr. Ward's suggestions 
as to less didactic membership, and monthly dinners, had made 
the scheme more attractive, but Woodman's determination to 
be of the company, and his special talent as high steward of the 
feast, which he had the wit quietly to demonstrate in advance, 
made the Club a comfortable fact, just when danger threatened 
of its being turned by outsiders, for a definite good purpose, into 
something quite different and transient, where Care would have 
always had his chair among the friends. 

Gratitude and honour, then, are due to Woodman's memory. 
He came from Maine, born in the little town of Buxton on the 
Saco River, in 1821. Like many youths with love for letters, he 
began mature life as teacher of a country school. He does not 
seem to have had a college education, but came to Boston to 
study and practise law. 

Mr. Woodman was a rather slight, alert man with reddish hair 
and English whiskers. 

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., in his memoir of Dana says: "Dr. 
Gould, the mathematician and astronomer, defined Woodman as 
*a genius broker,' and the definition was a happy one, for he had 
a craving for the acquaintance and society of men of reputation, 
and, indeed, lacked only the industry to have been a sort of Bos- 
well. . . . An amusing story-teller with a natural eye for character 
and a well-developed sense of humour, Woodman had at his com- 
mand an almost inexhaustible fund of anecdotes relating to the 
men who. In those days, made the Parker House and its somewhat 
famous restaurant a sort of headquarters. Though, during the 
Rebellion, he was sufficiently active and prominent to have been 
offered the position of Assistant Secretary of War, yet in his own 
mind the great achievement of his life was the founding of the 
Saturday Club, and his connection with that Club which could 
only have come about through his being its founder, was the thing 
on which he most prided himself." 



Horatio JVoodman 125 

Mr. Woodman was a member of the Adirondack Club from its 
formation. In their first camp, at Follansbee Pond, Mr. Emerson 
made some attempts to sketch in verse some of the company, 
Woodman among others. From his notebook on that occasion 
the following siftings from various trial-lines are presented: — 

WOODMAN 

Man of affairs, 

Harmonizing oddest pairs 

With a passion to unite 

Oil and water, if he might; 

Loves each in turn, but looks beyond. 

Gentle mind, outrageous matter; 

Filled with Shakspeare — down to Choate; 

His catholic admiration. 

Adoring Jesus, can excuse Iscariot. 

We that know him 

Much we owe him; 

Skilled to work in the Age of Bronze; 

Loves to turn it to account 

Of the helpless, callow brood 

From the Muses' mount. 

Fond of merit runs the scale 

Of genial approbation. 

Skilled was he to reconcile 

Scientific feud. 

To pacify the injured heart 

And mollify the rude; 

And, while genius he respected, 

Hastes to succor the neglected; 

And was founder of the Club 

Most modest in the famous Hub. 

To Emerson, as to all Free-Soilers, the disappointment, the 
shock of Mr. Choate's Indifference, In the matter of the surrender 
of the poor fugitives Sims and Burns, was very great. To them 
an Immoral law was necessarily void. The legal mind is less rev- 
olutionary. Woodman, from the time he came as a young man 
to Boston, had a hero-worship of Choate. At the time of Choate's 
death in 1859, Woodman wrote a remarkable article in the Atlantic, 
a tribute of affection as well as admiration, but commanding 
attention by its style. 



126 The Saturday Club 

Mrs. Florence Hall, daughter of Dr. Samuel G. Howe, remem- 
bers Mr. Woodman at their home in her youth, and recalls the 
fact that he was an excellent story-teller. He could tell Yankee 
stories very well, having been a schoolmaster "Down-East," she 
thinks. She speaks of him as a friend of Governor Andrew and 
her father. 

Mr. Woodman was active and public-spirited during war-time. 
He looked younger than he really was, and was, at that time, prob- 
ably very near the limit of the military age. When the Union Club 
was founded, he was one of the early members. 

That he should have been thought of for assistant secretary to 
Stanton in the War Office proves that he was recognized as able 
and patriotic by Boston's leading loyal men. The following ex- 
tract from a letter written to him, just after the return of peace, 
by Mr. Forbes, urging him, as having influence with Stanton, to 
protest at some ugly doings at Atlanta, ignored and unpunished, — 
probably against negroes, — shows that Forbes credited Woodman 
with some force and humanity: — 

"It would be of no use for me to say this to Mr. Stanton, who, 
though always personally courteous, has been led by circum- 
stances, or by some of my politic friends at Washington, to class 
me among the sentimental theorists and men of but one idea, 
whom I do not value in action much higher than he does; but 
if you were to say it for the Transcript (his steady advocate and 
defender) I think he would first correct the abuse, and next give 
you the means of proving to the public that he had done so, and 
that he was in earnest in putting his foot hard upon all such 
offenders." 

At one of the Albion dinners which Woodman arranged, a year 
or so before the Club came into being, he, a skilled gastronome^ 
cooked mushrooms on the table. The more rural or ascetic mem- 
bers of the company were unused to this luxury. Dwight was 
deputed, according to Emerson's journal, to taste and report. He 
bravely experimented and mildly said, "It tastes like the roof of 
a house." 

Mr. Woodman was married rather late in middle life. 

Between 1875 ^^^ ^879 he became seriously involved in some 



Horatio Woodman 127 

business transactions, and increasingly depressed. He was lost 
from a steamboat during a trip to New York in 1879. 

A lady, who, in her youth, often met Mr. Woodman at her 
father's house, and in society, tells me that she was much touched 
by the loyally kind and considerate expressions of members of 
the Saturday Club with regard to their late friend when she in- 
quired of them about his latter days. She also bore this pleas- 
ant testimony: "There is no manner of doubt that Mr. Wood- 
man's admiration of the men of letters and science, for whom his 
organizing skill and zeal made the wished-for Club a reality, was 
most earnest and genuine." 

At the time of this sad ending it is good to turn back to our 
record of April, 1871, and Woodman's inspired poem "The Flag." 

E. W. E. 



Chapter IV 

1857 

Go, bid the broad Atlantic scroll 
Be herald of the free. 1 



Once again the pine-tree sung: — 
* Speak not thy speech my boughs among; 
Put off thy years, wash in the breeze; 
My hours are peaceful centuries.' 

Emerson, Woodnotes 

THIS year was remembered with pride and pleasure by the 
early members because, first, of an event important in the 
literary history of America in which many of them were con- 
cerned and all interested; and, second, of a delightful enterprise, in 
which many joined. These were the launching of the Atlantic 
Monthly, and the founding of the Adirondack Club. 

The story of the earnest purpose of Mr. Underwood to found 
this magazine, and the credit due to him in awakening the inter- 
est of Mr. Phillips, the publisher, has been told. Of the member- 
ship during the Saturday Club's first twenty years about half 
were contributors to the Atlantic^ and many living members have 
written for it. In the days of its greatest brilliancy it had a hard 
struggle to float; now, after sixty years of good repute, it enjoys 
an assured prosperity. 

When, in April of this year, Lowell consented to be the Editor, 
by happy inspiration making it a condition that Holmes should 
contribute, the wish, long felt, for a magazine worthy of New 
England was assured of fulfilment. He asked the same favour of 
Longfellow, who, only promising to write for this magazine, if 

* In excuse of this perversion of the word Atlantic from its significance in Emerson's 
Fourth of July Ode in 1857, the Editor may plead; first, that the new magazine soon won 
its way abroad, and, second, that one of the main purposes of its founding was that it 
should be an organ of Freedom. 



1857 



I 29 



for any, nevertheless did so. Phillips's recruiting dinner, earlier 
mentioned, occurred early In May, and, in September, the maga- 
zine was launched. It was Holmes who christened it "The 
Atlantic." 

It is not worth while here to go further into particulars about 
this important event, as the whole story, told by most competent 
writers early connected with the magazine, has been told in the 
semi-centennial number of the Atlantic ^'^ as well as in Mr. Scudder's 
hije of Lowell. But it is pleasant to recall that. In the first num- 
ber, Lowell wrote a sonnet, also his amusing "Origin of Didactic 
Poetry"; Longfellow his beautiful "Santa Filomena"; William 
H. Prescott contributed his "Battle of Lepanto"; Motley, "Flor- 
entine Mosaics"; Emerson, the poems "Days," "Brahma," 
"The Romany Girl," and "The Chartist's Complaint," also the 
essay "Illusions"; and Dr. Holmes, checked, twenty-five years 
before, by the failure of a magazine in the midst of his serial, 
began his "Autocrat" contributions thus, "As I was going to say 
when I was Interrupted," ^ Whittier, not a member of the Club, 
until the next year, gave his "Gift of Tritemlus." For the second 
number Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Cabot, Motley, Whittier, 
and Emerson of the Club wrote, besides various others. For a long 
time the names of the writers were not given. 

The enterprise that helped to give distinction to this same sum- 
mer was a sort of crusade on Nature's behalf, preached by an 
enthusiast, William J. Stillman, and gallantly led by him the fol- 
lowing year. Born in the State of New York In uncongenial sur- 
roundings, he was led on by Insistent Nature through briars that 
tangled his path to his destiny of art and letters, and chivalrous 
labours to help oppressed peoples. He had come to New England 
in 1855, and his fine quality and promise had been at once gener- 
ously welcomed by Lowell and Norton. Of him Norton wrote: 
"He interests me greatly. I have never known any one more 
earnest and faithful in his desire and search for spiritual Improve- 

* September, 1907. 

^ The Doctor, remarking on this early episode, wrote, "The man is father to the boy 
that was, and I am my own son, as it seems to me, in those papers of the New England 
Magazine." His "son," then, who was untimely nipped in his first autocracy, was but 
twenty-three years old. 



130 The Saturday Club 

ment. . . . He is too self-introverted to be happy, and the cir- 
cumstances of his Hfe have been sad. . . . He needs inspiriting." 
Encouraged and backed by his new friends, Stillman started and 
conducted The Crayon^ the first art magazine published in this 
country. I think that both Norton and Lowell contributed to it, 
and probably induced others to do so, as well as to subscribe. But 
the magazine withered soon, born before its time. Stillman, 
spiritually refreshed, and now inspired by Ruskin's books, went 
as a painter to struggle with Nature in her most difficult aspect, 
the primeval scenery of the Adirondack Mountains. Refreshed 
by the sympathy he had met, and his most fortunate friendships, 
and with the moral inspiration of this new prophet, cast in beau- 
tiful form, Stillman worked alone and faithfully; learned much of 
painting by doing it. But he found other and valued masters 
there, and in new and attractive courses, the manly, straightfor- 
ward pioneers and hunters of the region. They liked him, too, 
and soon he was their equal, respected as such, with axe and oar 
and rifle and in the secrets of woodcraft. 

In 1857, Stillman determined that his friends must see, and 
perhaps save, before the chance forever vanished, this virgin 
relic of the ancient earth, the forest home whence man emerged 
ages ago to broader horizons of civilization. Lowell was the one 
through whom to work, and Stillman lured him thither. In August 
1857, Norton, writing to Clough, says: "I found Lowell very well 
and in capital spirits, having just returned from a wild, camping- 
out journey to the Adirondack Mountains. He has been cutting 
paths through woods in which no paths had ever been made be- 
fore, he had shot a bear that was swimming a lake, he had seen 
herds of wild deer, and measured pine trees whose trunks three 
men could not clasp around." 

Then Stillman found that a tract of some thousands of acres, 
beautiful Ampersand Pond, with its islands and their gigantic 
Norway (now called "red") pines, and the encircling mountains, 
were offered at sheriff's sale because of non-payment of taxes. 
The price asked was astonishingly low. Lowell interested many 
members of our Club, and some others, friends and, later, mem- 
bers, and this wild Paradise became theirs, yet subject to re- 



1857 



131 



demptlon, which seemed hardly likely and was limited to a few 
years. Stillman says, "The Lake was a mile and a half long, 
. . . the forest standing as it had stood before Columbus sailed 
from Palos." ^ Thus the enterprise was begun and members 
enlisted in 1857, but the story of their first crusade will appear 
in its proper place In the following summer. 

Longfellow records in his journal an affectionate and moving 
occasion thus: "May 28, 1857. A rainy day. The fiftieth or 
golden birthday of Agassiz. We gave him a dinner at Parker's; 
fourteen of us; at which I presided. I proposed the health of 
Agassiz and read a poem. Holmes and Lowell read humorous 
poems which were very clever. We sat down at half-past three 
and stayed till nine." May 28 seems to have come on Wednesday, 
that year, so the Club dinner must have been moved forward to 
meet the occasion. Emerson, in his mention of the occasion in 
his journal, gives the names of ten whom he counts members, 
but speaks of Holmes, Felton, Dresel, and Hillard as "strangers" 
(I.e., outsiders). Holmes, however, had apparently been chosen 
in at the previous meeting, and Felton certainly was, shortly 
after. Emerson adds: "Agassiz brought what had just been 
sent him, the last coloured plates to conclude the volume of his 
'Contributions, etc' which will now be published incontinently. 
. . . The flower of the feast was the reading of three poems writ- 
ten by our three poets for the occasion, ... all excellent in their 
way." This was Longfellow's: — 

THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ 

It was fifty years ago 

In the pleasant month of May, 
In the beautiful Pays de Vaud, 

A child in its cradle lay. 

And Nature, the old nurse, took 
The child upon her knee, 

* Through Stillman, the Club bought the entire section (less 500 acres) of the mountains 
clad with primeval forest, around beautiful Ampersand Pond, 22,500 acres. The price 
was $600. 



132 The Saturday Club 

Saying: "Here is a story-book 
Thy Father has written for thee." 

" Come, wander with me," she said, 
"Into regions yet untrod; 
And read what is still unread 
In the manuscripts of God." 

And he wandered away and away 

With Nature, the dear old nurse. 
Who sang to him night and day 

The rhymes of the universe. 

And whenever the way seemed long, 

Or his heart began to fail, 
She would sing a more wonderful song. 

Or tell a more marvellous tale. 

So she keeps him still a child, 

And will not let him go. 
Though at times his heart beats wild 

For the beautiful Pays de Vaud; 

Though at times he hears in his dreams 

The Ranz des Vaches of old, 
And the rush of mountain streams 

From glaciers clear and cold; 

And the mother at home says, "Hark! 

For his voice I listen and yearn; 
It is growing late and dark. 

And my boy does not return!" 

Agassiz was deeply moved by the poem, and by the plea. It 
is a relief and joy to remember that he was with or near his mother 
at Lausanne throughout the summer of 1859. 

Another festivity In which members of the Club took part came 
on August 7. The date was inconvenient for the regular gath- 
ering, so probably many others than members may have joined 
them in giving this dinner to Motley, who, the year before, having 
won fame by his Dutch, Republic^ had returned home and was then 
about to sail for Europe to pursue his great theme in The United 
Netherlands. Holmes read a poem of which a portion is here given : 



i857 



133 



A PARTING HEALTH 

Yes, we knew we must lose him — though friendship may claim 
To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame; 
Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own, 
'T is the whisper of love when the bugle has blown. 

As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel, 
As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel, 
As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string, 
He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring. 

What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom. 

Till their warriors shall breathe, and their beauties shall bloom, 

While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes 

That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies! 

In alcoves of death, in the charnels of time, 
Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime. 
There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung, 
There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue! 

Let us hear the proud story which time has bequeathed. 
From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed! 
Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom. 
Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom! 

The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake 
On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake. 
To bathe the swift bark, like the sea-girdled shrine, 
With an incense they stole from the rose and the pine. 

So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed 
When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed; 
The True Knight of Learning, — the world holds him dear, — 
Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career! 

This year and those that followed were times of much public 
anxiety and ferment. These drew friends more closely together, 
and it was well to have dark days lit up by occasional festive 
gatherings. But also these Club meetings were important for dis- 
cussion, and it might be to promote individual or concerted action. 
For the years of Buchanan's Administration, as of Pierce's, were 
those of constant struggle to keep Kansas and Nebraska free. 



134 The Saturday Club 

and to protect and arm Northern settlers against Intimidation and 
outrage. Free-State men from Kansas, John Brown among them, 
were telling to audiences in cities and villages throughout New 
England of the driving of citizens from the polls by raiding parties 
of Missourians, who then voted in their places, their actions con- 
nived at by the Administration. At these meetings money was 
freely given by rich and poor to encourage settlers from New 
England, and arm them with Sharps rifles. 

Here, in accordance with what has been already told of the 
order and time of their entry into the Club informally, the sketches 
of the members chosen in 1857 find place, all of them men of let- 
ters and professors in Harvard University, one of whom became 
its President. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Longfellow, In his childhood in Maine, was spoken of as "the 
sunlight of the house." In the Portland home were kindly, re- 
fined people, and good books. Born a scholar and thirsting for 
these, he also loved human relations, and, as he grew, was eager, 
social, and highly vitalized, and his day-dreams only quickened 
his working-power. He had a healthy soul, and had not the faults 
often accompanying the artistic temperament. 

He graduated at Bowdoin College — Hawthorne was his class- 
mate — In 1825, already having published verses which still 
hold their place In his collected poems. But prudent elders 
looked on the law as a less precarious path to success. Providen- 
tially, good Madam Bowdoin had willed that, at the college that 
bore the family name, there should be a professor of the French 
and Spanish, Italian and German languages. Such was the promise 
of this youth of nineteen that he received the appointment, with 
permission to go to Europe for some time to prepare himself. 
After two years of happy study he filled his place for five years In 
Bowdoin so well that Harvard called him to succeed George Tlck- 
nor as Professor of French and Spanish Languages and Literature 
and of Belles-Lettres. Again he had the privilege and joy of study 
and travel on the Continent. After his return to assume his chair 
in 1836, Cambridge was his home for life, a very homelike and 
rural Cambridge then. Living at first in the old Stearns house, 
he was on friendliest terms with his predecessor TIcknor, with 
Felton, eager scholar, Hillard, a lawyer, but more of a man of 
letters, and Henry R. Cleveland, then a teacher. So Important 
were they to each other, that they were called "The Mutual 
Admiration Club," yet within a few years the moral Issue of 
slavery, a shearing sword, divided Longfellow from the others, 
as it did Dana and Sumner and Dr. Howe. But this same cause 
drew Longfellow and Lowell — neighbours after Longfellow moved 
Into the Vassall mansion — the more together, close friends while 
life lasted. All these who follow, being of the brood of Prome- 



13^ The Saturday Club 

theus, and not of Epimetheus, without a second thought held 
out a helping hand to the slave while the tide of society ran 
strongly against them, but each according to his gift: Sumner 
in the Senate; Dana in the court-room; Howe in his support to 
the conscience-guerilla John Brown; Lowell by his trumpet-calls 
and his satires. But Longfellow in eight short poems showed 
simply the extreme pathos of the negroes' lot, but with no bitter- 
ness towards the slave-holders, for he could see and pity the 
state of society into which they were born. These poems might 
well have stirred the consciences of many of the best among 
them, but Longfellow yielded to his publishers' advice and let 
them omit these from the edition sold in the South, for which 
consent he was attacked by the Abolitionists.^ 

Longfellow adorned his professorship for nearly eighteen years. 
That course, also under Ticknor before him and Lowell his suc- 
cessor, afforded at least one oasis in much dry country. Unhap- 
pily its elevating and sweetening effect was lost to all but a few, 
for it was an "elective." In practical New England, where youths 
were expecting to be lawyers, doctors, merchants, elementary 
teachers, the course in Modern Languages and Belles-Lettres 
was not crowded, though when Southern youths formed a large 
contingent, it was probably more popular than later. But when 
one reflects on the hours spent reciting Whately's Logic or Rhet- 
oric, or Bowen's propagandum of Protection exclusively, and the 
merely grammatical emphasis of many of the instructors in Latin 
and Greek, one can but regret that this humane course had not 
been as obligatory as attendance on prayers. Yet we may well 
guess that Lowell, Norton, Ward, Story, Appleton, and the Per- 
kinses made first acquaintance with Longfellow in classroom, 
and that their future was affected by his influence. 

Though Longfellow does not seem to have been intimate with 

' But this course perhaps saved for that region the general humanizing influence of the 
poet, by not risking his general rejection, which some inflammatory newspaper article on 
the slave poems might have caused. It was well said by Underwood: "A man of Longfellow's 
quiet, scholarly habits and refined taste could not have been an agitator. The bold de- 
nunciation of a Boanerges would ill have befitted his lips. He would have felt out of place 
upon the platform of an anti-slavery meeting. But his influence, though quiet, was per- 
vasive, and it was a comfort to many earnest men to know that the first scholars and 
poets were in sympathy with their hopes, their prayers and labours." 



Henry W^adsworth Longfellow ^ii 

Hawthorne in college, his notice of Hawthorne's first tales was 
kind and helpful, and Hawthorne passed on to Longfellow a sad 
story of Acadie, told him by another, which came out in beauty 
from Longfellow's hands and gave him his first wide fame. Its 
old-world element appealed to Longfellow. Though from youth 
to age a good American, the first enchantment of Europe always 
remained with a man, who, in youth, going forth from a forest 
State, had wandered and tarried in lands of history and romance 
and art, where the face of Nature and the works of man are mel- 
lowed by Time into a new beauty. Although his mansion, with 
formal grounds, in a quiet university town, and its hospitality to 
men of letters and distinction from all parts of the world, and his 
own mild dignity, finished speech, and careful dress, suggested 
English aristocracy, it must be remembered that the lines of a 
recent popular poem were most applicable to him, — 

"He lived in a house by the side of the road 
And was the friend of man." 

No eight-foot-high wall with its ivy eked out by green broken-glass, 
nor forbidding serving-men, guarded his privacy. A lord might 
dine with him one day, and a seedy, almost mendicant teacher or 
adventurer the next. His hospitality was Arabian. Mr. Norton 
said that it was the penalty of his genius and kindliness that 
bores of all nations, especially his own, persecuted him; he would 
not show his weariness. "One day I ventured to remonstrate 
with him on his endurance of one of the worst of the class, a 
wretched creature. . . . He looked at me with a pleasant, reprov- 
ing, humorous glance and said, 'Charles, who would be kind to 
him if I were not,'" Within eight months, a Cuban, a Peruvian, 
a German, and three Italians came to him to get them places in 
Harvard College, presumably to teach their native tongues. No 
wonder he chafes in the privacy of his journal, — "I seem to be 
quite banished from all literary work save that of my professor- 
ship! The day is so full of business and people of all kinds coming 
and going. When shall I have quiet.'* — and will the old poetic 
mood come back.'"' Speaking to Fields of the poems which the 
mails poured in upon him "for candid judgment," he said: "These 



1 3 S The Saturday Club 

poems weaken me very much. It is like so much water added to 
the spirit of poetry." He could not but cry out, when alone, and 
yet was uniformly courteous as well as charitable and kind. Yet, 
so healthy was his temperament and well poised his character, 
that during his working years as a professor, in spite of increasing 
interruptions, his poems sang themselves to him constantly. He 
not only shot his shafts of light out into the world, but they hit at 
great distances, and they stuck. His verses early found readers 
in humble dwellings and log huts, from the Bay of Fundy to the 
Great Lakes and down along the Mississippi and far beyond, and 
introduced a love of poetry as no other had, and let in windows 
in people's lives. The English welcomed and loved them. They 
soon, in translation, spread throughout Europe, and even Asia 
and the African shores. A stay-at-home "Travel-Club" in the 
United States could wander with joy, in his poems, from Bruges to 
Prague, and thence to Kurdistan; from Norway to Sicily or to 
Spain. Like Burns, he reached the high and the low. It is said 
that the "Psalm of Life" is painted on fans in China. 

A friend allows me to use this description of Longfellow's out- 
ward appearance and kindly interest in college boys a few years 
before the founding of the Club:^ — 

"In Cambridge, I encountered on my first visit to the post- 
office a figure standing on the steps, which at once drew my at- 
tention. It was that of a man in his best years, handsome, genial 
of countenance, and well-groomed. A silk-hat surmounted his 
well-barbered head and visage, a dark frock-coat was buttoned 
about his form, his shoes were carefully polished, and he twirled 
a little cane. To my surprise he bowed to me courteously as I 
glanced up. I was very humble, young Westerner that I was, in 
the scholastic town, and puzzled by the friendly nod. The man 
was no other than Longfellow, and in his politeness to me he was 
only following his invariable custom of greeting in a friendly way 
every student he met. His niceness of attire rather amused 
the boys of those days, who, however, responded warmly to his 
friendliness and loved him much." 

Longfellow cared for music, sometimes found solitary enjoy- 

^ From The Last Leaf, by Professor James Kendall Hosmer. 



Henry JVadsworth Longfellow 139 

ment in playing on the piano in his home. When Ole Bull came 
to this country in 1845, they became friends, and the young Norse- 
man, in the company at Howe's tavern in Sudbury, "The Way- 
side Inn," is made to play the part of the bard reciting the saga 
of King Olaf. Luigi Monti, the Italian exile, also figuring there, 
was befriended by Longfellow and probably owed to him his place 
as an instructor in the College and his honorary degree. 

In summer Longfellow went to Nahant where he enjoyed 
Agassiz as a near neighbour. Tom Appleton was sure to be there 
too, with his yacht, unless he was in Europe. Longfellow's first 
wife died very early. Later, he married Appleton's sister. Mr. 
Norton spoke of her as very beautiful, "and her beauty was but 
the type of the loveliness and nobility of her character." They 
had, with their children, a most happy home for many years. 
Then followed the tragedy of Longfellow's life. Her light dress 
caught fire as she was sealing little packages for her children, and 
she died of her burns. Her husband was badly burned in his des- 
perate attempt to save her. 

"I have never seen any one who bore a great sorrow in a more 
simple and noble way. But he is very desolate," wrote Mr. Nor- 
ton. "Of all happy homes theirs was in many respects the happi- 
est. It was rich and delightful, not only in outward prosperity, but 
in intimate blessings. Those who loved them could not wish for 
them anything better than they had, for their happiness satisfied 
even the imagination." 

The war had brought its share of anxiety and pain mingled 
with pride into this home. Young Charles Longfellow was com- 
missioned second lieutenant in the First Massachusetts Cavalry 
in March, 1863, and suffered a severe wound in the fight at 
Kelly's Ford in November. 

All through life Longfellow held Dante in the highest honour. 
In 1849 the poet-professor wrote in his journal: "Work enough 
upon my hands, with lectures on Dante and the like. Wonderful 
poet! What a privilege it is to interpret this to young hearts. . . ." 

And, three days later: "Longed to write, . . . but was obliged 
to go to college. Ah, me! and yet what a delight to begin every 
day with Dante." 



140 The Saturday Club 

And now on the edge of winter, after his bereavement, his brother 
says that he felt the need of a continuous and tranquil occupation 
for his thoughts, and, after some months, summoned up resolu- 
tion to take up again the task of translating Dante, begun years 
ago and long laid aside. Even in earlier years he had said, "The 
work diffused its benediction through the day," and now it 
brought a new blessing, a gathering of his neighbours near to him 
in old friendship or in love for his loved poet, at regular inter- 
vals, in his own home, to hear and discuss his translation. These 
Wednesday evening meetings went on for more than two years. 
In March, 1867, Norton wrote: "Longfellow is busy with the final 
revision of his translation of the Divina Commedia, of which the 
whole is to be published very soon. Every Wednesday evening 
Lowell and I meet at his house to consider with him the last 
touches of his work; and on Saturday evenings he and Lowell 
come to me to read over with me my translation of the Fita 
Nuova, which is to appear as a companion volume to Longfel- 
low's work. These evening studies are delightful; and after we 
have finished our work we have a little supper to which generally 
one or two other friends come in, and at which we always have a 
pleasant time." 

Longfellow made his last visit to Europe in 1868-69 with his 
family and his brother-in-law Appleton. The Queen sent for him 
to come to see her at Windsor. He received honorary degrees 
from Cambridge and Oxford Universities. In town and country 
he was known by high and low and welcomed joyfully. On the 
Continent he visited all the regions dear to him from their asso- 
ciations. He passed two days with Tennyson in his home. When, 
two months after his return, he received from him "The Coming 
of Arthur" and "The Holy Grail," he wrote in his journal, "What 
dusky splendours of song there are in King Alfred's new volume." 
It may interest, even startle, the older Harvard graduates of the 
Club to hear Longfellow's description of Tennyson to Lowell, 
"If two men should try to look alike, they could not do it better 
than he and Professor Lovering without trying." 

Poems with which Longfellow graced certain special occasions 
at the Club, or in the memoirs of its members, will be given in 



Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 141 

due place. It is pleasant to know, and reassuring as to the human 
brotherhood at large, that even in this poet's lifetime thanks 
came to him from all quarters of the globe, directly or indirectly, 
from young and old whom he had cheered and helped. Since his 
death has come in a reactionary period against long-received tra- 
ditions aesthetic, and. even the ethical. Longfellow, like Tennyson, 
has been regarded with superior pity by apostles and practitioners 
of the rugged, the involved, the lawless in form and subject. He, 
a man of sweet, wholesome, and normal, did not deal with patho- 
logical, but universal, experiences. To him selection, purity, and 
finish were inevitable. 

When age overtook him, Longfellow with brave cheer said, 
that in its ashes and embers 

"Some living sparks we still discern, 
Enough to warm but not enough to burn. 
The night hath not yet come; we are not quite 
Cut off from labour by the failing light, 
For age is opportunity no less 
Than youth itself, though in another dress, 
And as the evening twilight fades away 
The sky is filled with stars invisible by day." 

Was it Norton who wrote — "He kept his friendships in ex- 
cellent repair. He was true to what had been. Remembrance 
maintained life in the ashes of old affection and he never made 
his own fame, or his many occupations an excuse for disregarding 
the claim of a dull acquaintance, or of one failing in the world"? 
With all his wide fame, this poet was a man of nobility and sweet- 
ness, not formal, nor patronizing, highly refined, but also highly 
human; yet the kind of person whose presence would naturally 
make it Impossible for coarseness or rudeness to get so far as to 
make reproof essential. 

He was spared long debility. His death was from acute pneu- 
monia, March 24, 1882. Emerson went to the last offices with 
his daughter Ellen. Next day she wrote: "We went yesterday to 
Mr. Longfellow's funeral. People did not go up to look at him, I 
don't know why, but as I could see him from where I stood, it 
seemed as if he must look very beautiful. I think he had a happy 



142 The Saturday Club 

end, his illness was very short. Father says he wanted he should 
live at least as long as he himself should; he was very sorry to have 
him die first. We went with Mrs. Agassiz and she said it was thq 
greatest comfort to her to stand with Father by that grave: *He 
was one of that group of friends, almost the last, and he himself 
was half gone to heaven. It seemed good to her to think that the 
burial, and all this side, was dim to him.' That interested me very 
much." 

Just a month later Emerson died. 

Moore's tribute to Campbell comes to mind as fitting Long- 
fellow: — 

"True bard and simple, — as the race 
Of heaven-born poets always are, 
When stooping from their starry place, 
They're children near, but gods afar." 

E. W. E. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

Of the difficulties which beset the way of the writers of these 
sketches in the cases of the more eminent and the more popular 
of the subjects, earlier mention has been made. Dr. Holmes is 
especially a case in point; versatile, brilliant, active through a very 
long life, the story of which, fully and excellently told by Mr. John 
Torrey Morse, is well known. Hence, though that memoir will 
be here much quoted, I, who was one of Holmes's students, 
shall introduce, perhaps in undue proportion, some personal rec- 
ollections. 

The late Dr. David Cheever, Dr. Holmes's accomplished as- 
sistant at the Medical School, gave interesting memories of that 
aspect of his chief which I shall here quote, while Mrs. Fields's 
pleasant words about her next-door neighbour and friend help out 
the sketch of this many-sided and lovable man. 

Since the Reverend Abiel Holmes held so lightly the gift from 
his wife to him, and to the world, of their firstborn, merely writ- 
ing in his journal of 1809, under the date of August 29, "son b.," 
it is the more interesting to see how strongly the youth, his merry 
school and college days past, felt his own budding powers. Once 
in Paris, in the face of the good clergyman's misgivings, he urged 
his right to time and money to make sure of their best develop- 
ment. Oliver's letters, youthfully inconsiderate of sacrifices which 
his education perhaps meant to his parents, show that he saw that 
Paris then was the centre of a scientific practice hitherto unknown 
in medicine, and that he was determined to gain all that he could 
of knowledge, theoretical and practical. The eager student asks 
his father, dubious about Paris: "What better can be done with 
money than putting the means of instruction — the certain power 
of superiority, if not of success — into the hands of one's children.? 
Besides, economy, in one sense, is too expensive for a student. I 
say freely that a certain degree of ease connected with my manner 
of living — a tolerably good dinner, a nice book when I want 



144 The Saturday Club 

it, and that kind of comforts — are in the place of theatres and 
parties, for which I have less taste than many good fellows of my 
acquaintance. . . . Once for all, I say that you may trust me. . . . 
To conclude, a boy is worth his manure as much as a potato patch, 
and I have said all this because I find it costs rather more to do 
things than to talk about them." 

Fortunately, for the youth, it might take his father's letters 
six weeks to come, his answer as long, and the father's answer to 
that as long. Also his uncle by marriage. Dr. James Jackson, the 
best physician in Boston, knew how invaluable were his oppor- 
tunities. The great physician of Paris, Louis, quickly recognized 
Holmes's zeal and ability, and gave him free access and special 
privileges in his hospital wards, and used his help in the details 
of a work he was preparing for publication. Holmes succeeded in 
staying abroad for more than two years, then returned, took his 
degree in Medicine, joined the Massachusetts Medical Society, 
and put out his sign. 

It is a curious fact that Holmes, like Longfellow and Lowell, 
under the influence of the elders, on leaving college tried to study 
law, — what an interesting type of lawyer he would have been, — 
but he quickly left that soil to lie fallow for his son to till. But, 
though the priestly ofhce was, in Holmes's youth, inconceivable 
for him, any one who will read his letters to his friend, Mrs. Har- 
riet Beecher Stowe,^ in later years will see that he might well have 
replaced the preacher in many a pulpit. Though certain unworthy 
types of clergymen were objects of his unsparing attack, this doc- 
tor, in the end, reached the souls of more hearers than his father 
did in the very human, searching, and purifying preaching in his 
books. 

The grafting of medicine on to a Puritan clerical stock, the 
re-potting into the Conservatory of Paris, the transplantation, 
after several years of vigorous culture, back to the native soil, 
gave a wonderfully successful hybrid, — a small, hardy peren- 
nial, not notably medicinal, yet a good test of medicine, blossom- 
ing singularly and sometimes beautifully, and bearing sweet, 
wholesome, and spicy fruit. 

* See Morse's Oliver Wendell Holmes, vol. ii, pp. 225-55. 




^^^C6r€/^ ^^ciJ^i^^^^u<i, 



Oliver TVendell Holmes 145 

It turned out that It was the joy of the study, under the lead- 
ing masters of medicine and surgery which were then passing from 
the empirical to the scientific stage, that had stirred his enthusi- 
asm. However, he had the honour and satisfaction of being one of 
the visiting medical staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital 
for three years, besides some private practice. Mr. Morse In his 
memoir, from which he allows me to quote freely, says, " I have been 
told that he never could become indifferent to the painful scenes 
of the sick-room, and of course when friends and neighbours were 
the sufferers he did not find his heart hardened." Chivalrous and 
sympathetic with regard to women, in his books, he everywhere 
recognizes the delicacy of their organization and cautions the 
coarser sex In the words which the French toy-makers print on 
the boxes, "// ne faut pas brutaliser la machine.''^ He would have 
cautioned the doctor or nurse dealing with the neurotic man or 
hysterical woman to remember George Herbert's ideal man, — 

" Who, when he hath to deal 
With sick folk, women, those whom passions sway, 
Allows for that, and keeps his constant way; 
Whom others' faults do not defeat. 
But, though men fail him, yet his part doth play." 

In after life Holmes admitted that he did not make any strenu- 
ous efforts to obtain business. But Holmes had a critical mind. 
Delicate, scientific diagnosis is one thing; what to do about the 
case quite another. Old-time multiple and drastic prescriptions 
to expel the disease, and bleeding even to a dangerous extent for 
all fevers, were still expected. Physiology was in Its infancy, 
as was chemistry. Accurate study of the action of separate drugs 
on the organism was hardly begun. Dr. Holmes would hardly 
care to be merely, — to use his own words, — 

" Planting little pills, 
The seeds of certain annual fruit 
Well known as 'little bills.'" 

He was bright enough to welcome and believe in Dr. Jacob 
BIgelow's startling paper, published about the time of Holmes's 
return from abroad, maintaining that almost any disease was self- 



14^ T^he Saturday Club 

limited if the patient had strength enough to weather, for a week 
or so, it, and the mediaeval medication. 

So, very soon, the young man's instinct for writing and love of 
versifying asserted themselves. He delivered the Phi Beta Kappa 
Poem in 1836 at Harvard, at the time he took his medical degree, 
and actually sent forth his first volume of poems before the year 
ended. In 1845, to his great pleasure, a door opened letting him 
out from medical practice, but yet leading into a way, for which 
his faithful study had admirably fitted him, along which he gladly 
travelled for thirty-five years. This was a professorship, first at 
Dartmouth College for two years, then in the Harvard Medical 
school, of Anatomy and Physiology. These were the nominal 
subjects, and admirably taught, until, in Physiology, laboratory 
methods and animal experiment superseded didactic instruction, 
when this subject was dropped from his teaching; but, when he 
began, he was in advance of almost any one here, because, in Paris, 
he had begun histological study with the microscope, and that 
instrument remained through life his favourite toy. In gross anat- 
omy he was a master and interested his pupils as no other could. 

Dr. David Cheever, his accomplished prosector, has given this 
admirable picture of the Professor at the school, then and for 
some years later, in North Grove Street : — 

"Four hours of busy dissection have unveiled a portion of the 
human frame, insensate and stark, on the demonstrating table. 
Muscles, nerves, and blood vessels unfold themselves in unvarying 
harmony, if seeming disorder, and the 'subject' is nearly ready 
to illustrate the lecture. . . . The winter light, snowy and dull, 
enters through one tall window, bare of curtain, and falls upon 
a lead floor . . . and there is naught to inspire the intellect or 
the imagination, except the marvellous mechanism of the poor 
dead body. . . . 

"To such a scene enters the poet, the writer, the wit, Oliver 
Wendell Holmes. Few readers of his prose or poetry could dream 
of him as here, in this charnel-house, in the presence of death. 
The very long, steep, and single flight of stairs leading up from 
the street below resounds with a double and laboured tread, the 
door opens, and a small, gentle, smiling man appears, supported 



Oliver TVendell Holmes 147 

by the janitor, who often has been called on to help him up the 
stairs. Entering, and giving a breathless greeting, he sinks upon a 
stool and strives to recover his asthmatic breath. . . . Anon re- 
covering, he brightens up, and asks, 'What have you for me to- 
day.^' and plunges, knife in hand, into the 'depths of his subject,' 
— a joke he might have uttered. . . . 

"Meanwhile the Professor has been running about, now as 
nimble as a cat, selecting plates, rummaging the dusty museum 
for specimens, arranging microscopes, and displaying bones. The 
subject is carried on a board into the arena, decorously disposed, 
and is always covered, at first, from curious eyes, by a clean white 
sheet. Respect for poor humanity and admiration for God's divin- 
est work is the first lesson and uppermost in the poet-lecturer's 
mind." 

To Dr. Cheever's memories I add my own of a few years later: — 

Meantime both staircases leading to the anatomical lecture- 
room were, for twenty minutes before the lecture, daily packed 
with struggling youths, and, when the bolts were drawn, it was as 
if a dam had burst and a torrent poured down the steep amphi- 
theatre and flooded its seats. Such a sight was seen at no other 
lecture. It was not only due to Dr. Holmes's exact technical 
knowledge and thorough demonstration of the dissection of the 
day, for the idlest and rudest students eagerly attended. 

To his title "Professor of Anatomy and Physiology" might well 
have been added " and the Humanities." He divested the cast-off 
human chrysalis of all gruesome associations, treated it reverently, 
summoned to counsel the old Masters of Anatomy, Albinus and 
the rest, and its martyr too, Vesalius, to praise the good work of 
his prosector and his student assistants. His illustrations were 
poetic, his similes most fortunate, and the lecture, though con- 
versational In tone, was a rhetorical masterpiece. 

Then the word passes among the young barbarians that this 
man has written a book, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table^ 
which they presently got,*'and read, and lent, — very likely their 
first improving book, — a liberal education In itself, betraying 
them by its sparkling shallows Into deeper basins where per- 



14^ The Saturday Club 

chance they learned to swim, or could flounder through till they 
felt firm bottom again. 

Dr. Holmes was Professor of Physiology too, the last to teach 
in the didactic way — he welcomed the laboratory method when 
it came in younger hands, always provided that experiments were 
done under anaesthetics. The instruction was valuable and al- 
ways civilizing. Ancient and modern literature, mechanics, 
optics (he was one of the first apostles here of the microscope 
with its beautiful and helpful revelations), psychology, behaviour, 
humanity, and religion found place in his instruction; yet he had 
a sense of proportion and subordinated them. 

No question could remain in any student's mind whether the 
Doctor loved his teaching. We could see how he enjoyed the per- 
fect service of his faithful handmaiden. Memory, secure in her 
prompting as to the complicated branches of each artery and the 
wonderful district-service of the nerves, and the Latin name of 
each. He never had notes to help him. We were narcotized by 
bad air, but he made it his business to make learning so enter- 
taining, and startle flagging attention by some surprising remark, 
that we could n't go to sleep. 

The Doctor's wit was admirable, and he seldom let it run away 
with him. His singular skill in running over the thin ice of subjects 
not usually allowed in general conversation was a temptation to 
him, but he usually accomplished it brilliantly. His literary 
armory was full of shining weapons wrought by him from physi- 
ological and even pathological material. May I be pardoned, for 
its wit's sake, for recalling some of his extraordinary rhetoric in 
the lectures.'' What could be happier as a simile than, when enu- 
merating the advances of medical science, and dwelling on the value 
of pathological anatomy, he admits that the individual examined 
is not benefited thereby, adding, "After all, it is a good deal like 
inspecting what remains of the fireworks on the fifth of July." 
When describing the regulation of the circulation in the skin 
through the action of the vaso-motor nerves on the arterioles in 
sudden fear, constricting them and producing pallor, or through 
inhibitory action, suddenly relaxing and filling the surface capil- 
laries with blood — he suddenly added, "that pleasing phenome- 



Oliver Wendell Holmes 1 49 

non which some of you may witness on the cheek of that young 
person whom you expect to visit this evening." Alluding to the 
shortening of the face in age by the loss of teeth and absorption 
of the sockets, he said, "You have, no doubt, noticed the extraor- 
dinary way in which elderly people will suddenly shut up their 
faces like an accordion." And, praising the modern dentists for 
their skilful repairing of the ravages of time, he said, "Had your 
art been thus perfected in the last century, we should not now see 
the Father of his Country, in Stuart's portrait, his attention divided 
between the cares of the State and the sustaining of his uppers 
in position." His poems often show what he would have de- 
lighted to demonstrate, how the facial muscles with which we 
laugh and cry lie side by side. 

The Doctor's wit lightened the hour, but It fixed the point il- 
lustrated In the student's mind. But there was another side. He 
was a Poet-Anatomist, a Poet-Physiologist, and a Poet-Micros- 
coplst. To Dollond's success in making the microscope achro- 
matic the victories of modern histology are due. Hear how the 
Doctor presents the matter: "Up to the time of the living gener- 
ation Nature had kept over all her inner workshops the forbid- 
ding inscription NO ADMITTANCE. If any prying observer 
ventured to spy through his magnifying tubes into the mysteries 
of her glands and canals and fluids, she covered up her work in 
blinding mists and bewildering haloes, as the deities of old con- 
cealed their favoured heroes in the moment of danger." See in 
what follows how even In inspection of the organs of perished mor- 
tality, he makes a poem of creation out of the poor dust: "Cells 
pave the great highway of the interior system. The Soul itself 
sits on a throne of nucleated cells, and flashes its mandates through 
skeins of glassy filaments which once were simple chains of 
vesicles." 

About the time when the Doctor gave up practice, the Lyceum 
system, rapidly spreading from New England through the land, 
gave him, with his knowledge, wit, and originality, ready and 
secure opportunity of earning by lecturing, but he was too much 
of a "CIt" to take and enjoy the chances of an itinerant lecturer, 
and his real sufferings from asthma in a new bed made him gladly 



1 5 o The Saturday Club 

abandon this source of revenue. But he enjoyed composing, and 
much more, delivering a poem on festive or literary occasions, 
especially if there were a chance for a slap, not spiteful, at the pro- 
fessions — for their good. Of these occasions he said, "To write 
a lyric is like having a fit; you can't have one when you wish you 
could (as, for instance, when your bore is in his third hour and 
having it all his own way), and you can't help having it when 
it comes itself." 

Dr. Holmes lived first in Montgomery Place (now Bosworth 
Street) ; then in Charles Street, finally in a Beacon Street house, — 

"Such a one 
In yonder street which fronts the sun," 

as the modest youth in his humbler days had coveted, but with 
the added charm of a clear view of the sunset sky beyond, the 
broad horizon, and the spires of his native town. Thence he wrote 
to Motley: "We poor Bostonians come to think at last that there 
is nothing like it in the orbs terrarum. I suppose it sounds, to 
one who is away, like the Marchioness with her orange-peel and 
water." However, for seven years he owned an ancestral place at 
Pittslield, to which he went in summer, but it was too far from 
beloved Boston. Yet the love for the country, and knowledge of 
country folks of various types, there acquired, were invaluable 
to him for his later writings, poems or prose. 

The Hub was world enough for Holmes, as London was for 
Johnson, and he did it justice, and justified it. Partly because of 
his utter love for it, partly because of his asthma, he almost never 
roamed. I think he never saw nor had any conception of the great 
West with its new ambitions, cravings for vast elbow-room, and 
its aversion, having set its hand to the prairie plough, to look back 
to the sweet associations of the Past. 

Those not born on the banks of the Charles, and who find that 
their preceding generations will not fulfil the numerical conditions 
that the good Doctor requires for recognition as belonging to the 
Brahmin caste^ may naturally chafe or laugh at his limitations, 
but, if they read his work through, they will easily pardon him, 
^^ because he loved much,'' and learn to love him. They may have 



Oliver TVendell Holmes 151 

heard the rumour that even St. Peter was reported to have whis- 
pered to a good Boston man as he passed him through the golden 
gates, "You won't Hke it." 

Well, seated on the Hub then — he might have had a worse 
chair — this charming and frankly avowed egotist — the reproach 
of the name being neutralized by the size of his heart and the 
humanity and culture of his mind — proceeded on a university- 
extension and home-culture plan as Autocrat, Professor, and Poet, 
to ameliorate the world. He surely accomplished much. 

Dr. Holmes knew that it was time for him to resign his place 
at the Medical School when the life of a new generation was be- 
ginning to transform it; yet opportunities for wider use had been 
opened to him. Called to help out a literary venture, he created 
here a chair with thousands in America and Europe on the 
benches. When pestered beyond his usual courteous tolerance by 
a lady correspondent from California, he wrote to a friend, "If 
she does n't jump into the Pacific, I shall have to leap into the 
Atlantic — I mean the original damp spot so called." Perhaps 
not thus driven, but lured in by his friend Lowell's persuasion. 
Dr. Holmes soon found himself, indeed, suddenly immersed in 
the Atlantic — the Monthly this time — and no one can doubt 
that he enjoyed it; and alike this sport and his stout swimming 
delighted the on-looking multitudes. 

Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal in 1862: "Holmes came out 
late in life, with a strong, sustained growth for two or three years, 
like old pear trees which have done nothing for ten years, and at 
last begin and grow great." And again, later: "By his perfect fin- 
ish, cabinet finish, gem finish, gem carved with a microscope or the 
carver's eye, and which perfection appears in every conversation; 
and in his part in a business debate, or at a college dinner-table, as 
well as in his songs, — he resembles Fontenelle, and Galiani, and 
Moore, though richer than either of them. Wonderful fertility, 
and aptness of illustration. He is an Illustrated Magazine with 
20,000 accurate engravings." 

Mr. Emerson also has preserved one of the Doctor's neat 
jokes: "When Andrew P. Peabody had been president pro tern. 
of the University a long time, and had been a favoured candidate 



1 5 2 The Saturday Club 

for the Chair, and Hill was elected, Dr. Holmes said : ' SzV vos non 
vobis nidificatis apes.'' " ^ 

Dr. Holmes's biographer thinks that his prizing the Club so 
highly was partly the result of his limited sphere of life. Had he, 
from wider travel and acquaintance, become cosmopolitan, "the 
Club would for him have assumed proportions more accurately 
adapted to the Universe in general. But in the little narrow Bos- 
ton routine these monthly gatherings were like nuggets of glit- 
tering gold scattered in a gravel field.'* 

A large part of the Doctor's happiness at these dinners was his 
enjoyment of his talk to, as well as with, these former acquaint- 
ances, now become fast friends. 

In the introduction to his A Mortal Antipathy, published in 
1890, he made the following remarkable statement, showing his 
pride and faith in Boston with no false modesty, and yet. If we 
extend his date, as he probably did unconsciously, from 1857 
to 1874, his boast might well be admitted. For then, to the roll 
of the Club had been added the names of Prescott, Whittler, 
Hawthorne, Parkman, Norton, and Howells, in pure letters, 
Sumner and Charles Francis Adams as statesmen and scholars, 
and the eminent men of science, pure or applied, Asa Gray, Jef- 
fries Wyman, the younger Agassiz, and Dr. S. G. Howe. Holmes 
wrote: "When, a little while after the establishment of the new 
magazine, the 'Saturday Club' gathered about the long table at 
'Parker's,' such a representation of all that was best in Amer- 
ican literature had never been collected within so small a compass. 
Most of the Americans whom educated foreigners cared to see — 
leaving out of consideration official dignitaries whose temporary 
importance makes them objects of curiosity — were seated at that 
board." When Holmes was told that some outsiders amused them- 

* A condensation by the Doctor of two verses in the Georgics of Virgil on the altruism 
of creatures: — 

Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes. 
Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves. 

Not for yourselves, O bees, you honey make, 
Not for yourselves, birds, do you build the nests. 

The transposition of final words gives for result, 

Not for yourself, A. P.s, you build a nest. 



Oliver JVendell Holmes ^SZ 

selves by calling the Club "The Mutual Admiration Society," 
"If there was not," said he, "a certain amount of 'mutual admira- 
tion' among some of those I have mentioned, it was a great pity, 
and implied a defect in the nature of men who were otherwise 
largely endowed." 

Mr. Morse tells the unhappy truth: "If Dr. Holmes's talk had 
been remembered in quotable shape anywhere, it would have been 
so in Boston, and if there were such reminiscences here, I think 
that I should be familiar with them; but I know of nothing of the 
sort. His talk is remembered as the scenery of the clouds is 
remembered, a picture dwelling in the mind, but never to be pro- 
duced to eyes which looked not upon it. . . ." And so it was with 
the others. 

Mr. James T. Fields was not only Dr. Holmes's publisher, but 
he and his accomplished and hospitable wife were, for years, his 
close neighbours. Mrs. Fields, in the last years of her life, took 
much interest in the proposed chronicle of the Club and gave me 
leave to draw freely upon her memories in her journals and books. 
She thus describes her friend: — 

"Nothing could be further from the ordinary idea of the roman- 
tic 'man of genius' than was his well-trimmed little figure, and 
nothing more surprising and delightful than the way in which his 
childlikeness of nature would break out and assert itself. . . . 

"Given a dinner-table, with light and colour and somebody oc- 
casionally to throw the ball, his spirits would rise and coruscate 
astonishingly. He was not unaware if men whom he considered his 
superiors were present; he was sure to make them understand that 
he meant to sit at their feet and listen to them, even if his own 
excitement ran away with him. 'I've talked too much,' he often 
said, with a feeling of sincere penitence, as he rose from the table. 
*I wanted to hear what our guest had to say.' But the wise guest, 
seizing the opportunity, usually led Dr. Holmes on until he forgot 
that he was not listening and replying. . . . 

"His reverence was one source of its inspiration, and a desire to 
do well everything which he undertook. He was a faithful friend 
and a keen appreciator, and he disliked to hear depreciation of 
others." 



154 T'he Saturday Club 

Of the Doctor In his writings his own words may well be quoted. 
He is 

"A Boswell, writing out himself; 
For though he changes dress and name, 
The man beneath is still the same, 
Laughing or sad, by fits and starts, 
One actor in a dozen parts; 
And whatsoe'er the mask may be, 
The voice assures us, This is he" 

Of course there was egotism; he always admitted it freely, but it 
was childlike, pleasant and also scientific. 

Mrs. Fields said that there was nothing left to say of him which 
he did not cheerfully and truthfully say of himself. " I am intensely 
interested in my own personality," he began, one day; "but we 
are all interesting to ourselves, or ought to be. I know I am, and 
I see why. We take, as it were, a mould of our own thought. Now, 
let us compare it with the mould of another man on the same sub- 
ject. His mould is either too large or too small, or the veins and 
reticulations are altogether different. No one mould fits another 
man's thought. It is our own, and as such, has especial interest 
and value." 

"Talk," said he to Mr. Leslie Stephen, "is to me only spading 
up the ground for new crops of thought." When opening conver- 
sation with another his look of expectation of something good was 
in itself a compliment, but hard to live up to. 

The Doctor was courteous in conversation, but Wit, at his 
elbow, often sorely tempted him in speech or in writing not to 
miss a happy opening. His friend said, "His sole aim was to hit 
the mark if possible, but, if a shot hit a head also, he showed a 
childlike pride in the achievement." 

He left the practice of medicine early because as yet it was too 
unscientific, and he did not like to earn money by it. Writing in 
other sorts drew him strongly. But he had one great fitness for 
the profession, his humanity. That basal principle of a doctor's 
work, in spite of his playful — and helpful — banter, made him 
more respectful to that than to the other "learned professions." 
Reverence and religion were never absent from his nature. Yet, as 



Oliver TVendell Holmes 155 

he did not spare his own profession, so he allowed no "benefit of 
clergy" to shield the Doctor of the Soul from his formidable wit 
or wrath, if in intelligence or virtue he did shame to his cloth. His 
delightful simile of the spirited persecution by the little king- 
bird of the black-robed crow well describes his own course. Es- 
pecially did he deride the violent and vain struggle of the narrow 
clergy to blind themselves and their flocks against the light of 
science. What could be neater than this parable,'' — 

"As feeble seabirds, blinded by the storms, 
On some tall lighthouse dash their little forms, 
And the rude granite smashes for their pains, 
Those small deposits that were meant for brains, 
Yet the proud fabric in the morning sun 
Stands all unconscious of the mischief done. 
Gleams from afar, all heedless of the fleet 
Of gulls and boobies brainless at its feet. 
I tell their fate, yet courtesy disclaims 
To call mankind by such ungentle names; 
Yet when to emulate their course ye dare 
Think of their doom, ye simple, and beware f^ 

I think It was In connection with the shock that the clergy 
experienced when Darwin's doctrine of Evolution was first an- 
nounced that Dr. Holmes most happily utilized the story, told in 
the Acts of the Apostles, of the letting down from heaven before 
the startled Peter, in a vision, a sheet gathered at the corners, 
in which he saw beasts of all kinds, clean and unclean, and the Di- 
vine bidding came, "Kill and eat." The shocked apostle drew 
back exclaiming, "Not so. Lord, for nothing common or unclean 
hath at any time entered Into my mouth." But the voice of the 
great Lawgiver came, sternly superseding the Mosaic law, — 
"What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common." 

A close friendship existed between Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Har- 
riet Beecher Stowe in the latter part of their lives. The cruel man- 
made dogmas In which both had been brought up, and the ques- 
tion of Sin, exercised them through life. Dr. Holmes wrote to 
her, " I do not believe that you or I can ever get the iron of Calvin- 
ism out of our souls." It seems, from the letters, to have rankled 
most in Mrs. Stowe. The Doctor found in anatomy, physiology, 



15^ 'The Saturday Club 

and surgery everywhere evidence of beneficent wisdom, and yet 
some terrors from his childhood seem to have lurked in him. 
He wrote: "My creed is to be found in the first two words of the 
Pater Noster. I know there is a great deal to shake it in the natu- 
ral order of things. . . . But I see no corner of the Universe which 
the Father has wholly deserted. The forces of Nature bruise and 
wound our bodies, but an artery no sooner bleeds than the Divine 
hand is placed upon it to stay the flow. . . . We cannot conceive of 
a Father's allowing so limited a being as his human child to ut- 
terly ruin himself." He postulates that "the Deity must be at 
least as good as the best conscious being that he makes," and 
shows the blasphemy of "supposing this world a mere trap, baited 
with temptations of sense which only Divine ingenuity could have 
imagined," to catch for endless torture most of the race, and 
especially the hopelessly ignorant with no wholesome opportuni- 
ties. 

Dr. Holmes recognized that a large part of the criminals 
punished, through all the ages, were "defectives," whose misdeeds 
were automatic, long before this fact was generally recognized by 
physicians, or at all in courts of justice. He humanely urged its 
consideration, in his stories, and, later, in the Atlantic (April, 
1875) in a paper called "Moral Automatism." 

I quote from an article in the London Quarterly Review the fol- 
lowing: "He was well described by Miss Mitford in 1851 as a small, 
compact, little man, the delight and ornament of every society he 
enters, buzzing about like a bee, or fluttering like a humming- 
bird, exceedingly difficult to catch unless he be really wanted for 
some kind act, and then you are sure of him." 

Dr. Holmes was, of course, sorry that he was not beautiful. 
In sending his photograph to a lady who had asked for it, he wrote, 
"Nature did not ask my advice about my features, and I take 
what was given me and am glad it is no worse." And to another, 
"The photograph Is a fair portrait enough; but I do not think 
my face is a flattering likeness of myself. ... I have always con- 
sidered my face a convenience rather than an ornament." 

Of her neighbour Mrs. Fields says, "Conventionalities had a 
strong hold upon him . . ." although Dr. Holmes's conventions 



Oliver JVendell Holmes ^Sl 

were more easily shuffled off than a casual observer would be- 
lieve. 

It has been said by a friend that he was not altruistic. True, but 
in his own way he was an active helper of mankind, civilizing, 
then advancing the knowledge, of hearers and readers, in a bril- 
liant, cheery way — making them remember. 

But one great service must by no means be forgotten. How many 
a young mother has been saved to her husband and children be- 
cause of the courage, the determination, and ability with which 
the young Dr. Holmes insisted, in the face of fierce opposition by 
the learned doctors and eminent professors, that the deadly poison 
of child-bed fever can be carried by the physician to new cases. 
His opponents, two leading obstetricians of the country, attacked 
the young doctor with blind abuse. He quietly republished his 
article, asking that the case be temperately and scientifically con- 
sidered. He said: " I take no offence, and attempt no retort. No 
man makes a quarrel with me over the counterpane that covers 
a mother, with her new-born infant at her breast. There is no 
epithet in the vocabulary of slight and sarcasm that can reach 
my personal sensibilities in such a controversy. . . . Let it be 
remembered that persons are nothing in this matter; better that 
twenty pamphleteers should be silenced, or as many professors 
unseated, than that one mother's life should be taken." 

Dr. Holmes bore with courage and sweetness the successive 
bereavements which befel him in the last ten years of his life, — 
— his younger son, his wife, and his only daughter. Meantime 
with manly patience and even an outward cheerful bearing, he 
suffered from increasing weakness and difficulty of breathing. 
Yet he received and even invited to walk with him the many 
friends who gladly came to him at Boston or Beverly Farms. He 
watched his growing old with a half-humorous physiological in- 
terest. Death came to him with little distress, sitting in his 
chair. 

Mr. Morse quotes his pleasant words, most fitting to end this 
sketch: — 

" I have told my story. I do not know what special gifts have 
been granted or denied me; but this I know, that I am like so 



1 5 8 "The Saturday Club 

many others of my fellow-creatures, that when I smile, I feel as 
if they must; when I cry, I think their eyes fill; and it always 
seems to me that when I am most truly myself I come nearest 
to them, and am surest of being listened to by the brothers and 
sisters of the larger family into which I was born so long ago." 

E. W. E. 



CORNELIUS CONWAY FELTON 

Felton, the future scholar, varied writer, professor, and finall/ 
President of Harvard University, was born at Newbury, Massa- 
chusetts, in 1807, the same year with Agassiz and Longfellow. 
His parents, quiet New England country-folk, must have seen , 
that they had a boy worth educating. 1 

A friend of Felton's wrote that Mr. Simeon Putnam, of North 
Andover, who prepared young Felton for college at his private 
school, awakened in him such an enthusiasm for classical study 
that before going to college he had read Sallust, Virgil, Cicero's 
Orations, each several times; that he could repeat much of the 
poetry of the Graecla Minora from memory; also had read all of 
Tacitus and large portions of Xenophon and the Iliad, and the 
Greek Testament four times. More astonishing yet, he also 
brought with him to college a translation of the whole of Grotius's 
De Veritate. He suffered the penalty for this overwork for years, and 
yet he did extra work in college on Hebrew and the modern lan- 
guages, and largely supported himself by teaching. He is said to 
have been a rather rough boy when he came to college, but to 
have smoothed off rapidly. He taught for a time in Mr. Cogswell's 
admirable Round Hill School at Northampton. Forbes and Ap- 
pleton, some four years younger than Felton, were scholars there. 

Though a wonderful scholar, zealous and enthusiastic, he lacked 
the faculty of arousing these qualities in unregenerate sophomores 
or lazy juniors. He was unsympathetic, and, unlike Mr. Gurney, 
too readily reacted to their "natural enemies" theory, the curse 
of colleges. Yet one of his younger Cambridge neighbours says 
that his knowledge and enthusiasm made him, in Europe, a de- 
lightful travelling companion, knowing everything interesting 
about places, their history, and also their legends. A friend said 
that he especially cared to study the Greek mind and life in the 
best period. "To him, therefore, the life of Greece consisted, not 
solely in its great men, but in the euphonies of its words and in 
the rhythm of its periods, . . . and those works of its sculptors 



i6o The Saturday Club 

and founders which immortalized over again the materials of a 
literature already immortal." 

Felton was a large, burly man with a head of unusual size, a 
short neck and a dark, rubicund complexion, the type that used to 
be called apoplectic. He was impulsive, easily moved, though 
genial. His head was further magnified by a mass of curly black 
hair. 

The Mutual Admiration gathering of young Felton and his 
early friends in Cambridge has been told of in the sketch of Long- 
fellow. In the stormy political issues that soon arose, Hillard, 
Cleveland, and Felton were more conservative; then Longfellow 
parted from them on the moral issues. Felton was a frequent 
contributor to the North American Review. He backed Longfellow 
against the defamations of Poe. Longfellow had translated a ballad 
that he found in German into English. Poe recognized in it the 
Scotch ballad "Bonnie George Campbell." It seems that a Ger- 
man had translated it and Longfellow innocently translated it back, 
not knowing the original. Poe publicly charged him with fraud. 

Felton was most agreeable and fresh-spirited with every one he 
met. He had a cordial, delightful laugh. In one of Lowell's essays 
on Cambridge in old times, he described Felton telling a good 
story, "his great laugh expected all the while from deep vaults of 
chest, and then coming in at the close, hearty, contagious, mount- 
ing with the measured tread of a jovial butler who brings ancient- 
est good-fellowship from exhaustless bins, and enough, without 
other sauce, to give a flavour of stalled ox to a dinner of herbs." 

Francis H. Underwood writes thus pleasantly of the Profes- 
sor's redeeming breadth and mellowness: "The exclusive pursuit 
of scholastic and scientific studies is often a desiccating process; 
and the man who can toss the moons of Saturn for their avoirdu- 
pois, or discourse on the Kritik of Kant, or annotate the Clouds 
of Aristophanes, is often only an intellectual machine. He may 
be the more perfect machine for his self-denial, but he is so much 
the less a well-developed man. Felton was one who toiled furi- 
ously and long, and then, when the time came, was a genial and 
cloud-dispelling talker, accompanying the wisdom or wit of the 
company with a merriment fit for Olympus on a holiday." 



Cornelius Conway Felton 1 6 1 

Here also is a pleasant testimony from England. John Forster 
wrote to Longfellow in 1843: "Howl envy you the intercourse 
with Felton! What a creature to love he is. How justly, and with 
what heart, he writes!" 

Felton's industry was great, and much of it, we must think, 
on things which he was drawn to, and so, as William Morris said 
good work should become, a joy to the maker as well as to him 
into whose hand it falls. Here is a case in point. Few boys are 
drawn to Greek in college. There are other reasons, but here is 
certainly one: The preparatory study for the last fifty years has 
been the Anabasis and the first three books of the Iliad. For twenty 
years before, boys prepared on a varied and charming selection 
made by Felton from ^sop, Lucian, chapters from Xenophon, 
especially the highly interesting Cyropaedia, a book of Herodotus, 
a bit of Thucydides, odes of Anacreon, an extract from each of the 
three great tragedians, an episode from the Odyssey, an ode of 
Sappho and of Simonides, and, last, the beautiful Epitaph on 
Bion by Moschus. A boy with any literary response could, thus 
prepared, hardly fail to remember things in this book with pleas- 
ure and take some interest in the Greeks, their art, their language, 
and their country. The present writer, no scholar, here renders 
thanks for the good and lasting gifts of Cornelius Felton to him 
in that work. 

The Professor's tastes and gifts led him to work in manifold 
directions. Mr. Underwood said, "His heart was always divided 
between his beloved Greeks and the men who were carrying on 
the literary work of the day." He enjoyed helping Longfellow, 
translating some of the poetry, old or modern, for his collection, 
The Poets and Poetry of Europe. Each year he worked upon and 
often issued some edition of a classic author, translated some im- 
portant work, like Menzel's German Literature, or wrote for some 
encyclopaedia. He was a frequent contributor to the North Amer^ 
ican Review. In 1848, Guyot came to Boston to lecture, and 
for two years made his home in Cambridge near Agassiz, his 
friend. Felton translated Guyot's Earth and Man into English. 

At last Felton had the joy of visiting Europe. He sailed in 1853 
and stayed abroad more than a year, giving half his time to 



1 62 "The Saturday Club 

Greece, there seeing at last the gleaming marble of the Acropolis 
among its flowers, between stately Lycabettus and the storied 
iEgean. Once again he went thither, but that was when his health 
and strength were failing. When Dr. Howe returned from Crete 
in 1 867 he told Dana that Byron and Felton were idolized among 
the Greeks. 

The year after Felton's first return he was included in the 
forming Club, brought in, of course, by his neighbour Agassiz — 
they had now the bond of having married sisters — and Longfel- 
low and Lowell, who knew his social qualities as well as his 
varied gifts. Of the original fourteen of the Club, probably all 
were opposed to slavery except Peirce and Felton. ■ The as- 
tronomer was bound to the South by strong friendships, and the 
scholar, though praising the Greeks in their struggle for liberty, 
was actively hostile to an agitation to free negroes which might 
endanger the peace and union of the States. Hence a coolness had 
sprung up between him and Abolitionists, especially Howe and 
Sumner, once his close friends. In the Kansas agitation Long- 
fellow wrote: "Felton is quite irritated with Sumner about poli- 
tics. I hope it will not end in an open rupture; but I much fear 
it will." But his eyes were opened by the march of events, and 
in March, 1856, just after the dastardly, murderous assault on 
Sumner sitting in his desk in the Senate Chamber, Longfellow 
writes, — "At dinner, — let me record it to his honour, — Felton, 
who has had a long quarrel with Sumner, proposed as a toast, 
*the reelection of Charles Sumner.'" This toast may have been 
at the Club dinner and must have been a great relief to rather 
strained relations. 

Senator George F. Hoar, in his account of Harvard Sixty Years 
Ago^ thus speaks of Felton in somewhat superlative fashion: "The 
Greek Professor was the heartiest and jolliest of men. He was cer- 
tainly one of the best examples of a fully rounded scholarship 
which this country or, perhaps, any country ever produced. He 
gave, before the Lowell Institute, a course of lectures on 'Greece, 
Ancient and Modern,' into which is compressed learning enough 
to fill a large encyclopaedia. . . . Professor Felton was a very im- 
pulsive man, though of great dignity and propriety in his general 



Cornelius Conway Felt on 163 

bearing." The Senator illustrates these qualities, and also the 
Professor's love for the purest English, in the following reminis- 
cence: His brother, John Brooks Felton, twenty years younger 
than he, was the most brilliant scholar in his class. Just before 
his graduation he was reported to the Faculty for the offence of 
swearing in the college yard. The usual punishment then was a 
"public admonition" and this involved further a deduction of 
sixty-four scholarship marks, also a letter to the parent. But the 
Faculty were merciful in this case and ordained that Professor 
Felton should admonish his brother in private. Cornelius was re- 
spected by the young sinner rather as a father than a brother. He 
sent for John and thus began: "' I cannot tell you how mortified 
I am that my brother, in whose character and scholarship I had 
taken so much pride, should have been reported to the Faculty 
for this vulgar and wicked offence.' The contrite John said, *I 
am exceedingly sorry. It was under circumstances of great prov- 
ocation. I have never been guilty of such a thing before and 
have never in my life been addicted to profanity.' 'Damnation! 
John,' broke in the Professor, ' how often have I told you the word 
is profaneness^ and not profanity!'" 

I quote from the journal of Longfellow an instance of Felton's 
as well as Lowell's, wit at a dinner where were present six members 
of the Club-to-be three years later: "January 5th, 1853. Lowell 
gave a supper to Thackeray. The other guests were Felton, Clough, ^ 
Dana, Dr. Parsons, Fields, Edmund Quincy, Estes Howe, and my- 
self. We sat down at ten and did not leave the table till one. Very 
gay, with stories and jokes. 'Will you take some port?' said 
Lowell to Thackeray. 'I dare drink anything that becomes a 
man,' answered the guest. 'It will be a long while before that 
becomes a man,' said Lowell. 'Oh, no,' cried Felton, 'it is fast 
turning into one.' As we were going away Thackeray said, 'We 
have stayed too long.' ' I should say,' replied the host, 'one long 
and too short, — a dactylic supper.' " 

In i860, when Dr. Walker resigned the presidency of Harvard 
University, Professor Felton was chosen as his successor. This 
was through the urgency and influence of Agassiz and Peirce, who 

^ Arthur Hugh Clough, the English scholar and poet. 



1^4 The Saturday Club 

were eager that the college should really be broadened into a 
university worthy of the name, and the uniform undergraduate 
classical and mathematical departments should not be all in all, 
and that the Schools, Scientific and Medical, should have their 
due rank and importance. Felton was their friend, and no doubt 
under their influence. But such changes could not be rapidly made. 
The governing body and the influential Alumni must first be con- 
verted. 

President Felton was already a sick man with but two years of 
life before him. In these no great change appeared in the college 
policy. President Eliot, then one of the younger professors, speaks 
of President Felton as very pleasant and social. After Faculty 
meetings he liked to have a little simple supper for his special 
friends among the members, at his house, close by, and so was in 
a hurry to adjourn the meeting and get to it. 

The following extracts are from Longfellow's journal in 1862: — 

"February 27th. My birthday. Translated Canto xxiii of 
Paradiso. News comes of Felton's death at his brother's, in Ches- 
ter, near Philadelphia. I go down to see Agassiz, and find him in 
great distress. Dear, good Felton! how much he is beloved!" 

"March 4th. A cheerless, gray March day, — the streets 
flooded with snow and water. Felton's funeral, from the College 
chapel. So passes away the learned scholar, the genial companion, 
the afl"ectionate, faithful friend!" 

"March 26th. Meet Sophocles in the Street. He has written 
an epitaph in Greek for Felton's gravestone, which he wishes me 
to translate. A strange, eccentric man is Sophocles, with his blue 
cloak and wild gray beard, his learning and his silence. He makes 
Diogenes a possibility. . . . 

"I send you a literal translation; like the original, it is in the 
elegiac, or hexameter and pentameter metre: — 

'Felton, dearest of friends, to the land unseen thou departest; 
Snatched away, thou hast left sorrow and sighing behind! 
On thy companions, the dear ones, alas! the affliction has fallen. 
Hellas, of thee beloved, misses thy beautiful life!'" 

April 28, Longfellow writes to a friend: "I can hardly tell you 
how changed Cambridge has become to me. Felton, too, is gone; 



Cornelius Conway Felt on 165 

one of my oldest and dearest friends. It seems, indeed, as if the 
world were reeling and sinking under my feet. He died of heart 
disease, and is buried here at Mount Auburn, the crests of whose 
trees I can see from this window where I write. A truly noble, 
sweet nature!" 

Lowell, lonely in Europe, in 1873 wrote home in verse his vision 
of the Club as he fondly recalled it, the poem being mainly a 
memory of Agassiz, of whose death he had just heard. This is 
given in its proper place, but Agassiz's friend and brother-in-law, 
Felton, is also thus remembered : — 

"He too is there, 
After the good centurion fitly named, 
Whom learning dulled not, nor convention tamed, 
Shaking with burly mirth his hyacinthine hair, 
Our hearty Grecian of Homeric ways 
Still found the surer friend where least he hoped the praise!" 

E. W. E. 



Chapter V 

1858 

That makes the good and bad of manners, namely, what helps or hinders fellow- 
ship. For fashion is not good sense absolute, but relative; not good sense private, 
but good sense entertaining company. It hates corners and sharp points of charac- 
ter, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary, and gloomy people; hates whatever can 
interfere with total blending of parties; whilst it values all peculiarities as in the 
highest degree refreshing which can consist with good fellowship. And besides the 
general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendour of intellectual power 
is ever welcome in fine society as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit. 

Emerson 

IN Mr. Emerson's journal of 1836 he says, "In our Club we. pro- 
posed that the rule of admission should be this; whoever by his 
admission excludes any topic from our debate shall be excluded." ^ 

The Saturday Club seems to have had the instinct that the 
membership of aggressive reformers, however much they might be 
worthy of respect and praise, would be destructive to its happy 
organization. Whittler said to Fields one day that he was 
"troubled about Wendell Phillips: he Is a hard man. It Is the 
Calvlnist In him." Dr. S. G. Howe — but he was also a brilliant 
doer — and James Freeman Clarke, who was sweet-tempered, 
and Edmund Quincy, who had a lively sense of humour, were 
comfortable reformers among the membership, never complained 
of for untimely zeal, except that Mr. Norton chafed a little at 
Clarke's unshakeable optimism. Sumner, living in Washington, 
was not Included In the first group. Early in the war, the Club 
wished to do him honour for his noble struggle, then renewed, 
in a cause for which he had undergone a long martyrdom. Because 
of Its enduring effects very possibly, and a continued life of strug- 
gle, Into which he put his whole soul, he became less fitted for easy 
social Intercourse and seems to have been sometimes a trying 
convive on the rather rare occasions when he came to the dinners. 

Our printed list of members, given to each on joining, shows In 

* The club referred to was The Symposium. 



1858 1 67 

one group the Fourteen who gathered in the first two years, and, 
under the heading, "Members Elected since 1857," gives names 
and dates in due sequence. But Mr. Norton, who was taken into 
the Club in i860, led the writer to believe that formal balloting 
and by-laws did not come into use so early as our printed official 
list would indicate; records not for many years later. However, 
William H. Prescott and Whittier were, very likely informally, 
asked to join the fellowship in 1858. Sketches of these remarkable 
men follow this chapter. The sickness and death of Prescott 
prevented his ever appearing, if Mr. Norton's memory was cor- 
rect. Whittier, valiant fighter as he had been in the political 
arena, had a rustic shyness, felt uncomfortable away from home, 
and perhaps shrank in an almost maidenly manner from anything 
approaching conviviality. But one object of this fellowship was 
exactly this, to draw from their retreats in the bushes, pastures, 
and woods their genii loci. Whittier was persuaded to be counted 
a member of the fellowship, and, in the next year, Hawthorne. 

In his memoir of Dr. Holmes, Mr. John Torrey- Morse reminds 
us that in January of this year, in the fourth paper of the Auto- 
crat in the Atlantic^ Holmes gave to the world his "Chambered 
Nautilus," and that Whittier said, as he laid it down, "Booked 
for Immortality." Up to this time the Doctor, with his few am- 
bitious attempts, had been valued more for his ever ready vers de 
societe, amusing, though sometimes unexpectedly moistening the 
eyes. His biographer says: — 

"Dr. Holmes himself was more ambitious to be thought a poet 
than anything else. The fascination of that word of charm had 
bewitched him as it has so many others. It implied genius, in- 
spiration, a spark of the divine fire. . . . 

"Once, being asked whether he derived more satisfaction from 
having written his 'Essay on Puerperal Fever,' which had saved 
so many lives, or from having written the lyric which had given 
pleasure to so many thousands, Dr. Holmes replied: 'I think I 
will not answer the question you put me. I think oftenest of 
"The Chambered Nautilus," which is a favourite poem of mine, 
though I wrote it myself. The essay only comes up at long inter- 
vals. The poem repeats itself in my memory, and is very often 



1 68 The Saturday Club 

spoken of by correspondents in terms of more than ordinary praise. 
I had a savage pleasure, I confess, in handling those two profes- 
sors, — learned men both of them, skilful experts, but babies, as 
it seemed to me, in their capacity of reasoning and arguing. But 
in writing the poem I was filled with a better feeling — the highest 
state of mental exaltation and the most crystalline clairvoyance, 
as it seemed to me, that had ever been granted me — I mean that 
lucid vision of one's thought, and of all forms of expression which 
will be at once precise and musical, which is the poet's special gift, 
however large or small in amount or value. There is more selfish 
pleasure to be had out of the poem, — perhaps a nobler satisfac- 
tion from the life-saving labour.'" 

Still speaking of this poem, Mr. Morse says: "Abraham Lin- 
coln knew it by heart; the publishers selected it from all Dr. 
Holmes's poetry for printing by itself in an elaborately illustrated 
edition. Hundreds of persons can repeat every line of it. Such 
facts mean much." 

In January was a festival of the Harvard Musical Association, 
of which our John Sullivan Dwight was the high priest. It seems 
to have been a happy occasion, the music supplemented by a seri- 
ous poem by Holmes and a humorous one by Lowell. 

In early spring, Rowse was drawing Longfellow's head in 
crayon, but the poet congratulates himself that he saved enough 
of the day to write a whole canto of "The Courtship of Miles 
Standlsh," at first called "Priscilla." Meantime Felton has the 
happiness to set sail for immortal Athens. At the Club dinner in 
May, the serene and kindly Longfellow was stirred to very plain 
speech. He writes: "Felt vexed at seeing plover on the table at 
this season, and proclaimed aloud my disgust at seeing the game 
laws thus violated. If anybody wants to break a law, let him 
break the Fugitive Slave Law. That is all It is fit for." ^ 

And again Longfellow's journal gives evidence of his frank and 
fearless speech, but courteous to the guest and leaving no sting: — 

^ Mr. Emerson, on the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, a few years earlier, was 
moved to speak to his townsfolk thus: "An immoral law makes it a man's duty to treak 
it at every hazard. For virtue is the very self of every man. It is, therefore, a principle 
of law that an immoral contract is void, and that an immoral statute is void. For, as laws 
do not make right, and are simply declaratory of a right which already existed, it is not to 
be presumed that they can so stultify themselves as to command injustice." 



1858 1 69 



"July 31st, 1858. Went to town to dine with the Club. The 

only stranger present was Judge of Florida. I discussed 

slavery with him. He said, ' Slavery always has existed. Scripture 
does not forbid It. The text "Do unto others," etc., means do to 
the slave what you would have him do to you if you were his 
slave.' To which I answered, 'If you were a slave, the thing you 
would wish most of all would be your freedom. So your Scrip- 
ture argument for Slavery Is knocked Into a cocked hat.' He 
blushed, then laughed and said, 'Well, It Is so; I give It up,' very 
frankly. Came down in the evening boat [to Nahant, their sum- 
mer home] with Agasslz." 

In August, Stillman, their variously fit and attractive captain, 
led the Adirondack Club, not yet to their Lake Ampersand, the 
purchase of which was probably not quite completed, but to a 
lake easier of access from Bill Martin's, on Lower Saranac, the 
end of the long wagon drive from Keeseville, New York. Still- 
man wrote: — 

"The lake where our first encampment was made was known 
as Follansbee Pond, . . . and it lies In a cul-de-sac of the chain of 
lakes and streams named after one of the first of the Jesuit ex- 
plorers of the Northern States, Pere Raquette. Being elected 
captain of the hunt, and chief guide of the Club, it depended on me 
also, as the oldest woodsman, to select the locality and superin- 
tend the construction of the camp, and the choice was deter- 
mined by the facility of access, the abundance of game, and the 
fact that the lake was out of any route to regions beyond, giving 
the maximum of seclusion, as the etiquette of the woods pre- 
vented another party camping near us. 

"Follansbee was then a rare and beautiful piece of untouched 
nature, divided from the highway, the Raquette, by a marsh of 
several miles of weary navigation, shut in by the hills on all sides 
but that by which we entered, the forest still unscarred, and the 
tall white pines standing In files along the lake shores and up over 
the ridges, not a scar of axe or fire being visible as we searched the 
shore for a fitting spot to make our vacation lodging-place. Many 
things are requisite for a good camping-ground, and our camp was 
one of the best I have ever seen, at the head of the lake, with 



170 'The Saturday Club 

beach, spring, and maple grove. Two of the hugest maples I 
ever saw gave us the shelter of their spreading branches and the 
supports to the camp walls. Here we placed our ridge-pole, laid 
our roof of bark of firs (stripped from trees far away in the forest, 
not to disfigure our dwelling-place with stripped and dying trees), 
cut an open path to the lakeside, and then left our house to the 
naiads and dryads, and hurried back forty miles to meet our 
guests. . . . Tradition has long known it as the 'Philosophers' 
Camp,' though, like Troy, its site is unknown to all the subse- 
quent generations of guides, and I doubt if in all the Adirondack 
country there is a man except my old guide, Steve Martin, who 
could point out the place where it stood." 

However surely Oblivion was following in the wake of those 
Argonauts of the forest chain of lakes, the freshness of their joy 
still lingers in the verses of one. 

"'Welcome!' the wood-god murmured through the leaves, — 
'Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.' 
Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple boughs, 
Which o'erhung, like a cloud, our camping-fire. 
Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks, 
Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor. 

"Ten scholars, wonted to He warm and soft 
In well-hung chambers, daintily bestowed. 
Lie here on hemlock boughs, like Sacs and Sioux, 
And greet unanimous the joyful change, 
Sleep on the fragrant brush as on down-beds. 
Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air 
That circled freshly in their forest-dress 
Made them to boys again." 

Stillman painted on the spot an admirable picture of the morn- 
ing hours' work or diversions, before the excursions by boat or 
on foot began, the sun filtering down between the foliage of the 
vast, columnar trunks of pine, maple, and hemlock. There are 
two groups; on one side, Agassiz and Dr. Jeffries Wyman dis- 
secting a fish on a stump, with John Holmes, doubtless with 
humorous comment, and Dr. Estes Howe, as spectators; on the 
other, Lowell, Judge Hoar, Dr. Amos Binney, and Woodman try- 
ing their marksmanship with rifles, under the instruction of the 



U 2 



■^ 



<J z 




sO 



c^r:: 




Ij 


■> 


^ 


sb 


*<! 


S 


V^ 






^ 


^ 


1-^ 


>« 




s 


•?; 


.=^ -^ 


t$ 


s^ 




C*) 










N 
















^ 




,tV) 


1 


■^ 


— 






^ 






^*^ 


?? 





^ c^ 



t*^ 



s 



00 



i858 



171 



tall Don Quixote-like Stillman; between the groups, interested, 
but apart, stands Emerson, pleased with the gifts of all. Prolong- 
ing the shooting party towards the edge of the picture two or three 
guides are gathered, silent critics.^ 

In recruiting this company the rifle had proved both attractive 
and repellent. Stillman's skill whether as marksman or hunter 
was unusual, and he was an admirable instructor for amateurs. Of 
his experiences in recruiting the party he wrote: "I had done all 
I could to induce Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes to join 
the party, but the latter was too closely identified with the Hub 
in all its mental operations to care for unhumanized nature, and 
Longfellow was too strongly attached to the conditions of com- 
pletely civilized life to enjoy roughing it in flannels and sleeping 
on fir boughs. The company of his great-brained friends was a 
temptation at times, I think; but he hated killing animals, had 
no interest in fishing, and was too settled in his habits to enjoy 
so great a change. Possibly he was decided in his refusal by Emer- 
son's purchase of a rifle. 'Is it true that Emerson is going to take 
a gun.?' he asked me. 'Yes,' I replied. 'Then I shall not go,' he 
said; 'somebody will be shot.'" 

Though Emerson was once paddled noiselessly by night into a 
remote bay, "jack hunting" (that is, with a torch and reflector 
in the bow of the skiff), and the guide pointed to the water's edge, 
where a deer was gazing at the wondrous light, and whispered 
"Shoot," Emerson could only see a "square mist," and his rifle 
remains until now guiltless of blood of man or beast. Each man 
of the company had a special guide assigned to him by Stillman, 
but he asked and received the privilege of doing that service in 
full for Agassiz, rowing him in his own boat on the water journey, 
and almost daily on his collecting excursions. He wrote: — 

"For Agassiz, I had the feeling which all had who came under 
the magic of his colossal individuality, — the myriad-minded 
one to whom nothing came amiss or unfamiliar, and who had a 
facet for every man he came in contact with. His inexhaustible 
bonhomie won even the guides to a personal fealty they showed 

' This picture was bought by Judge Hoar, and bequeathed by him to the Concord 
Public Library. 



172 'The Saturday Club 

no other of our band; his wide science gave us continual lectures 
on all the elements of nature — no plant, no insect, no quadruped 
hiding its secret from him. The lessons he taught us of the leaves 
of the pine, and of the vicissitudes of the Laurentine Range, in 
one of whose hollows we lay; the way he drew new facts from the 
lake, and knew them when he saw them, as though he had set his 
seal on them before they were known; the daily dissection of the 
fish, the deer, the mice (for which he had brought his traps), were 
studies in which we were his assistants and pupils. All this made 
being with him not only 'a liberal education,' but perpetual sun- 
shine and good fortune. When we went out, I at the oars and he 
at the dredge or insect-net, or examining the plants by the marsh- 
side, his spirit was a perpetual spring of science. When he and 
Wyman entered on the discussion of a scientific subject (and they 
always worked together), science seemed as easy as versification 
when Lowell was in the mood, and all sat around inhaling wisdom 
with the mountain air. Nothing could have been, to any man with 
the scientific bent, more intensely interesting than the academy 
of two of the greatest scientists of their day." 

Stillman's high estimate of the wise, gentle, judicial, and modest 
Jeffries Wyman will be given in the sketch of him later. 

"At our dinners, the semblance of which life will never offer 
me again, the gods sent their best accompaniments and influ- 
ences — health, appetite, wit, and poetry, with good digestion. 

'Our foaming ale we drank from hunters' pans — 
Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave 
Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread. 
All ate like abbots, and, if any missed 
Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss 
With hunter's appetite and peals of mirth.' 

Lowell was the Magnus Apollo of the camp. His Castalian hu- 
mour, his unceasing play of wit and erudition — poetry and the 
best of the poets always on tap at the table — all know them who 
knew him well, though not many as I did; but when he sat on 
one side of the table, and Judge Hoar (the most pyrotechnical 
wit I have ever known) and he were matching table-talk, with 
Emerson and Agassiz to sit as umpires and revive the vein as it 



i858 



173 



menaced to flag, Holmes and Estes Howe not silent in the well- 
matched contest, the forest echoed with such laughter as no club 
ever knew, and the owls came in the trees overhead to wonder. 
These were symposia to which fortune has invited few men, and 
which no one invited could ever forget. . . . 

"For Lowell I had a passionate personal attachment to which 
death and time have only given a twilight glory." 

Here Stillman's narrative must be interrupted to put on record 
a story of Lowell, showing a quality in him that would hardly 
have been divined in the Cambridge poet. Emerson wrote it in his 
pocket notebook on the day after the daring venture. 

"On the top of a large white pine in a bay was an osprey's 
nest around which the ospreys were screaming, five or six. We 
thought there were young birds in it, and sent Preston to the top. 
This looked like an adventure. The tree might be a hundred and 
fifty feet high, at least; sixty feet clean straight stem, without a 
single branch, and, as Lowell and I measured it by the tape as 
high as we could reach, fourteen feet, six inches in girth. Preston 
took advantage of a hemlock close by it and climbed till he got 
on the branches, then went to the top of the pine and found the 
nest empty, though the great birds wheeled and screamed about 
him. He said he could climb the bare stem of the pine, 'though 
it would be awful hard work.' When he came down, I asked him 
to go up it a little way, which he did, clinging to the corrugations 
of the bark. Afterwards Lowell watched long for a chance to 
shoot the osprey, but he soared magnificently, and would not 
alight. . . . Lowell, next morning, was missing at breakfast, and, 
when he came to camp, told me he had climbed Preston's pine 
tree." 

To resume Stillman's record: — 

"To Emerson, as to most men who are receptive to Nature's 
message, the forest was the overpowering fact. 

'We climb the bank, 
And in the twilight of the forest noon 
Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard.' 

The 'twilight of the forest noon' is the most concentrated expres- 
sion of the one dominant sentiment of a poetic mind on first 



174 T^he Saturday Club 

entering this eternal silence and shadow. . . . We were much to- 
gether. I rowed him into the innermost recesses of Follansbee 
Water, and would, at his request, sometimes land him in a soli- 
tary part of the lake-shore, and leave him to his emotions or 
studies. We have no post, and letters neither came nor went, and 
so, probably, none record the moment's mood; but well I remem- 
ber how he marvelled at the completeness of the circle of life in 
the forest. He examined the guides, and me as one of them, with 
the interest of a discoverer of a new race. Me he had known in 
another phase of existence — at the Club, in the multitude, one 
of the atoms of the social whole. To find me axe in hand, ready 
for the elementary functions of a savage life, — to fell the trees, 
to kill the deer, or catch the trout, and at need to cook them, — 
in this to him new phenomenon of a rounded and self-sufficient 
individuality, waiting for, and waited on, by no one, he received 
a conception of life which had the same attraction in its com- 
pleteness and roundness that a larger and fully organized exist- 
ence would have had. It was a form of independence which he 
had never realized before, and he paid it the respect of a new 
discovery. . . . 

"What seems to me the truth is, that Emerson instinctively 
divided men into two classes, with one of which he formed per- 
sonal attachments which, though tranquil and undemonstrative, 
as was his nature, were lasting; in the other he simply found his 
objects of study, problems to be solved and their solutions re- 
corded. There was the least conceivable self-assertion in him; he 
was the best listener a genuine thinker, or one whom he thought 
to be such, ever had; and always seemed to prefer to listen rather 
than to talk, to observe and study rather than to discourse. So 
he did not say much before Nature; he took in her influences as 
the earth takes the rain. He was minutely interested in seeing 
how the old guides reversed the tendencies of civilization. . . . 

"Looking back across the gulf which hides all the details of 
life, the eternal absence which forgets personal qualities, the calm, 
platonic serenity of Emerson stands out from all our company as a 
crystallization of impersonal and universal humanity; no vexation, 
no mishap, could disturb his philosophy, or rob him of its lesson. 



isss 



175 



"The magical quality of the forest is that of oblivion of all that 
is left in the busy world, of past trouble and coming care. The 
steeds that brought us in had no place behind for black Care. 
We lived, as Emerson says, — 

'Lords of this realm, 

Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day 
Rounded by hours where each outdid the last 
In miracles of pomp, we must be proud, 
As if associates of the sylvan gods. 
We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac. 
So pure the Alpine element we breathed, 
So light, so lofty pictures came and went.'" 

Stillman, writing the above happy memories of a golden prime 
in the last years of the century, said: — 

"A generation has gone by since that unique meet, and of those 
who were at it only John Holmes and I now survive. The voices 
of that merry assemblage of 'wise and polite' vacation-keepers 
come to us from the land of dreams; the echoes they awakened 
in the wild wood give place to the tender and tearful evocation 
of poetic memory; they and their summering have passed into 
the traditions of the later camp-fires, where the guides tell of the 
'Philosophers' Camp,' of the very location of which they have 
lost the knowledge. Hardly a trace of it now exists as we then 
knew it. The lumberer, the reckless sportsman with his camp-fires 
and his more reckless and careless guide, the axe and the fire, have 
left no large expanse of virgin forest in all the Adirondack region, 
and every year effaces the original aspect of it more completely." 

Emerson, on the spot, thus strove to picture Stillman's heroic 
figure: — 

"Gallant artist, head and hand, 
Adopted of Tahawus grand, 
In the wild domesticated, 
Man and Mountain rightly mated, 
Like forest chief the forest ranged 
As one who had exchanged 
After old Indian mode 
Totem and bow and spear 
In sign of peace and brotherhood 
With his Indian peer. 
Easily chief, who held 



1 7^ The Saturday Cluh 

The key of each occasion 

In our designed plantation, 

Can hunt and fish and rule and row, 

And out-shoot each in his own bow, 

And paint and plan and execute 

Till each blossom became fruit; 

Earning richly for his share 

The governor's chair, 

Bore the day's duties in his head. 

And with living method sped. 

Firm, unperplexed. 

By no flaws of temper vexed, 

Inspiring trust. 

And only dictating because he must. 

And all he carried in his heart 

He could publish and define 

Orderly line by line 

On canvas by his art. 

I could wish 

So worthy Master worthier pupils had — 

The best were bad." 

One day, that August, a thrill of human communication shot 
under the Atlantic Ocean from continent to continent. By a 
strange chance the quick-travelling report of it reached the camp- 
ers among the primeval woods while on a lake excursion. Emer- 
son tells, in his forest notebook, how 

"Loud exulting cries 
From boat to boat, and in the echoes round. 
Greet the glad miracle. Thought's new-found path 
Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways, 
Match God's equator with a zone of art, 
And lift man's public action to a height 
Worthy the enormous cloud of witnesses, 
When linked hemispheres attest the deed. 



A spasm throbbing through the pedestals 
Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent 
Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill 
To be a brain, or serve the brain of man. 
The lightning has run masterless too long; 
He must to school and learn his verb and noun 
And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage." ^ 

* In his poem The Adirondacs the reception of this wonderful news is told at greater length. 



i858 



177 



This miracle had, indeed, been shown to be possible, yet almost 
immediately some mischance that befel the cable in the depths 
of the sea, interrupted its use for seven years. When this occurred, 
another of our poets, "The Professor," sent forth the question 
on everybody's lips as to who in the Provinces had received and 
transmitted the few words that emerged from the ocean at the 
western landing-place. He published the whole conversation, as 
follows: — 

DE SAUTY 

Professor Blue-Nose 

Professor 

Tell me, O Provincial! speak, Ceruleo-Nasal! 
Lives there one De Sauty extant now among you, 
Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder, 
Holding talk with nations? 

Is there a De Sauty,* ambulant on Tellus, 
Bifid-cleft like mortals, dormient in nightcap, 
Having sight, smell, hearing, food-receiving feature 
Three times daily patent? 

Breathes there such a being, O Ceruleo-Nasal? 
Or is he a Mythus, — ancient word for "humbug," 
Such as Livy told about the wolf that wet-nursed 
Romulus and Remus? 

Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty? 
Or a living product of galvanic action. 
Like the acarus bred in Crosse's flint-solution? 
Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal! 

Blue-Nose 

Many things thou askest, jackknife-bearing stranger. 
Much-conjecturing mortal, pork-and-treacle-waster! 
Pretermit thy whittling, wheel thine ear-flap toward me, 
Thou shalt hear them answered. 

When the charge galvanic tingled through the cable, 
At the polar focus of the wire electric 
Suddenly appeared a white-faced man among us; 
Called himself "De Sauty." 

* The first messages received through the submarine cable were sent by an electrical 
expert, a mysterious personage who signed himself De Sauty. 



17^ The Saturday Club 

As the small opossum, held in pouch maternal, 
Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term mammalia. 
So the unknown stranger held the wire electric, 
Sucking in the current. 

When the current strengthened, bloomed the pale-faced stranger, — 
Took no drink nor victual, yet grew fat and rosy, — 
And from time to time, in sharp articulation, 
?>a.\d,'' All right! DeSauty." 

From the lonely station passed the utterance, spreading 
Through the pines and hemlocks to the groves of steeples, 
Till the land was filled with loud reverberations 
Oi '' All right ! DeSauty." 

When the current slackened, drooped the mystic stranger, — 
Faded, faded, faded, as the stream grew weaker, — 
Wasted to a shadow, with a hartshorn odour 
Of disintegration. 

Drops of deliquescence glistened on his forehead. 
Whitened round his feet the dust of efflorescence, 
Till one Monday morning, when the flow suspended, 
There was no De Sauty. 

Nothing but a cloud of elements organic, 
C.O.H.N., Ferrum, Chlor., Flu., Sil., Potassa, 

Calc, Sod., Phosph., Mag., Sulphur, Mang. (.?) Alumin. (.?) Cuprum, (.?) 
Such as man is made of. 

Born of stream galvanic, with it he had perished! 
There is no De Sauty now there is no current! 
Give us a new cable, then again we'll hear him 
Cry, ''All right ! De Sauty." 

This story of the Club comes from a letter which Lowell wrote 
to a friend in New York in October: "You were good enough to 
tell me I might give you an account of our dinners. ... I remember 
one good thing about last dinner. The dinner was for Stillman, 
and I proposed that Judge Hoar should propose his health in a 
speech. 'Sir!' (a long pause) *in what I have already said I 
believe I speak the sentiments of every gentleman present, and 
lest I should fail to do so in what I further say,' (another pause) 
*I sit down.'" 



i858 



179 



This seems to me a good instance of the Judge's temperamental 
doom of forgetting (or being blind to?) important considerations 
when a chance for unexpected wit offered. The Judge did not 
mean to be disagreeable to Stillman, with whose artistic tempera- 
ment he could hardly be in sympathy; he was made 

"Of rougher stuflF that could endure a shake" — 

and thought that possible sensitiveness was not worth taking 
too much care about when a truth (as it possibly was) could be 
flashed out and would amuse everybody else, and possibly the 
guest. He was like a horse that, when he sees a jump, takes the 
bit in his teeth. Lowell had, himself, a little of the same cruelty 
of wit, it seems to me; could n't sacrifice an opening for it. 

Lowell goes on: "And two days before, at Agassiz's, — the 
Autocrat giving an account of his having learned the fiddle, his 
brother John, who sat opposite, exclaimed, 'I can testify to it; he 
has often fiddled me out of the house, as Orpheus did Euridice 
out of the infernal regions.' Is n't that good? It makes me laugh 
to look at it now I have written it down. The Autocrat relating 
how Simmons,^ the Oak Hall man, had sent 'the two finest pears' 
— *of trousers?' interrupted somebody. But can one send poured- 
out champagne all the way to New York and hope that one bubble 
will burst after it gets there to tell what it used to be? A dinner 
is never a good thing next day. For the moment, though, what 
is better? We dissolve our pearls and drink them nobly — if we 
have them — but bring none away. Nevertheless, we live and 
dine and die." 

^ The enterprising pioneer of the ready-made clothing business, and of extensive ad- 
vertising, in Boston. 



WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

The dates of election to membership in the Club suggest now 
and then curious questions. Why this or that man was not chosen 
sooner is sometimes a puzzle. On the other hand, considering 
the natural preference for a dinner company of manageable con- 
versational size, the conservatism of middle-aged gentlemen long 
grown fond of one another's society, and the dread power of the 
black-ball, one wonders how certain members, whatever their 
individual virtues may have been, could possibly have been 
elected at all. In the case of Prescott, however, the only surprise 
is that he should not have been numbered among the original 
members of the Saturday Club. No man in Boston was a greater 
favourite in society, and while the delicate state of his health, 
throughout his entire working life, was such as to deprive him 
of many general social pleasures, he was peculiarly fond of such 
intimate intercourse with a few friends as the new Club afforded. 
Many of the original members, like Longfellow and Holmes, were 
particularly attached to him, and his younger fellow-historian, 
Motley, who had good reason for the warmest gratitude to Pres- 
cott, was also in the first list of members. Yet Prescott, for 
some reason not now discoverable, though very likely through 
his own hesitation to undertake even the most attractive of 
new social obligations until his unfinished book, the History of 
Philip the Second, should be completed, did not join the Saturday 
Club until 1858. In February of that year he suffered a slight 
shock of apoplexy, was put in consequence upon a vegetarian 
diet, and was forced to even more than his customary self-denial 
of social pleasures. It is uncertain whether he actually attended 
any dinners of the Club. In January, 1859, he succumbed to a 
second stroke of apoplexy. In our Club records, the name of 
William Hickling Prescott was thus the first to be marked with 
an asterisk. 

A passage from Longfellow's journal expresses the universal 





IC^J C ty 



William Hickling Prescott 1 8 1 

sense of loss among Prescott's friends: "January 29th, 1859. 
The first thing that catches my eye In the morning paper Is the 
death of Prescott. Mournful news! He was well at twelve o'clock; 
at two, he was dead. So departs out of our circle one of the most 
kindly and genial men; a man without an enemy; beloved by all 
and mourned by all." "We shall see that cheerful, sunny face no 
more!" Wrote Longfellow to Sumner: "Ah, me! what a loss this 
is to us all, and how much sunshine it will take out of the social 
life of Boston!" 

On the 31st of January, the poet wrote in his diary: "Prescott's 
funeral was very Impressive and touched me very much. I re- 
member the last time I spoke with Prescott. It was only a few 
days ago. I met him In Washington Street, just at the foot of 
Winter Street. He was merry, and laughing as usual. At the close 
of the conversation he said, 'I am going to shave off my whis- 
kers; they are growing gray.' 'Gray hair Is becoming,' I said. 
'Becoming,' said he, 'what do we care about becoming, who must 
so soon he goingV 'Then why take the trouble to shave them off?' 
'That's true,' he replied with a pleasant laugh, and crossed over 
to Summer Street. So my last remembrance of him Is a sunny 
smile at the corner of the street." 

Sumner's answer to Longfellow's letter shows not only his own 
affection but the esteem In which Prescott was held In Europe. 

MoNTPELLiER, March 4, 1859. 
Dear Longfellow, — Yes, It was your letter which first told 
me of Prescott's death. The next day I read it in the Paris papers. 
Talllandier announced it at the opening of his lecture. The cur- 
rent of grief and praise is everywhere unbroken. Perhaps no man, 
so much in people's mouths, was ever the subject of so little un- 
klndness. How diflFerent his fate from that of others ! Something 
of that Immunity which he enjoyed In life must be referred to his 
beautiful nature, in which enmity could not live. This death 
touches me much. You remember that my relations with him had 
for years been of peculiar intimacy. Every return to Boston has 
been consecrated by an evening with him. I am sad to think of 
my own personal loss. . . . There is a charm taken from Boston. 



1 82 T'he Saturday Club 

Its east winds whistle more coldly round Park Street Corner. 
They begin to tingle with their natural, unsubdued wantonness. 

Ten years earlier, Longfellow's journal had given this pleasant 
glimpse of Prescott as he appeared at the age of fifty-three, un- 
subdued in mind or body by his infirmity: "September 4, 1849. 
A lovely morning tempted me into town. In the street, met Pres- 
cott, rosy and young, with a gay blue satin waistcoat, gray trousers, 
and shoes." 

"Rosy and young," indeed, was the impression made by this 
rare spirit, from first to last, upon his contemporaries. If there is 
little to be said about Prescott's brief connection with the Club 
upon whose roll of membership his is still one of the most hon- 
oured names, something must nevertheless be indicated as to the 
social group which he represented, and as to his personal char- 
acteristics. His place as an American historian is too well known 
to need discussion here. 

In addition to many essays and monographs, two lives of Pres- 
cott have been written. One was by his lifelong friend George 
Ticknor, published in 1863. The old scholar of Park Street com- 
posed a stately biography, full of invaluable matter, in which 
one beholds an eminent historian decorously robed and posed for 
the gaze of posterity. Mr. Rollo Ogden has written a briefer and 
more informal book for the "American Men of Letters" series, 
but his work is soundly documented with some materials inac- 
cessible to Ticknor, and conveys, more vividly than was possible 
for the historian of Spanish Literature, Prescott's personal charm. 
Yet from neither of these books one gets a clear impression of the 
secure, opulent, high-minded society into which William Hickling 
Prescott was born in Salem in 1796. This grandson of Colonel 
"Prescott the Brave" of Bunker Hill fame, and the son of Judge 
Prescott, first of Salem and after 1808 of Boston, took his place 
in a world very much to his liking, a world cultivated and serene, 
with noble traditions and agreeable companionship. His college 
classmate, President Walker, of Harvard, said at the memorial 
meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, held after Pres- 
cott's death in 1859: "My recollections of him go back to our col- 



TVilliam Hickling Prescott 1 8 3 

lege days, when he stood among us one of the most joyous and 
light-hearted, in classic learning one of the most accomplished, 
without any enemies, with nothing but friends." The boy lived 
in 1 1 Hollis, like his father William before him, and his son William 
after him, and when he was graduated in 1 8 14 Judge Prescott gave 
him a Commencement "spread" in a tent large enough to allow 
five hundred guests to sit down to a sumptuous dinner. The 
undergraduate frolic in the Commons, which cost young Pres- 
cott the sight of his left eye and was to impair so seriously his 
working powers for the remainder of his days, had taken place in 
his junior year. The boy who threw that piece of bread, Ticknor 
tells us, never expressed any contrition or sympathy for the suf- 
ferer, but Prescott knew his name, and later In life rendered him a 
signal kindness. The Irreparable physical disability, and the brave 
and sweet spirit that triumphed over it, now became for Prescott, 
as later for Parkman, the fundamental conditions for his career. 
The story of Prescott's heroic achievement is fortunately a familiar 
one, and need not be retold here except by way of reminder of the 
nature of the man whom the Saturday Club, after his long fight 
had been won, desired to have among Its members. 

How he spent two years In Europe for his health, after gradua- 
tion, and how he came home in 1817 to subject himself to the most 
rigid physical and Intellectual discipline In the literatures of 
England, France, Italy, and Spain, Is well known. He made a 
most happy marriage with Susan Amory. His father gave him 
an ample allowance. He could purchase books without stint, 
employ secretaries, secure copies of manuscripts from foreign 
archives. From boyhood he had been a great favourite in Boston 
society, and as early as 181 8 he was one of the founders of a so- 
cial or literary club which he enjoyed for forty years. Ticknor 
gives a list of the members, but Prescott's, as It happens, is the 
only name that appears also upon the Saturday Club list. It 
may be that Prescott's loyalty to this older organization was the 
reason for his not joining the Saturday Club at its beginning. 

His taste for historical studies developed early. In a letter to 
Dr. Rufus Ellis in 1857 he said: "I had early conceived a strong 
passion for historical writing, to which, perhaps, the reading of 



1^4 'T'he Saturday Club 

Gibbon's Autobiography contributed not a little. I proposed to 
make myself a historian in the best sense of the term." Yet for 
years he hesitated between various tempting historical fields, and 
it was not until January 19, 1826, that he wrote in his diary: 
"I subscribe to the 'History of the Reign of Ferdinand and 
Isabella.'" Mr. Ogden tells us that over against this entry Pres- 
cott added in 1847 the words: "A fortunate choice." After ten 
years' labour the manuscript was ready for the printer. Scarcely 
any one outside of Prescott's family knew that he had been writ- 
ing. Finally Judge Prescott remarked: "The man who writes a 
book which he is afraid to publish is a coward," and the book ap- 
peared at Christmas-time in 1837. This was the year of Car- 
lyle's French Revolution^ a work, by the way, which Prescott 
thought "perfectly contemptible" in both form and substance. 
The Scotchman's groanings and objurgations as he gave birth to 
his masterpiece are in curious contrast with Prescott's serene 
comment upon his own task. "Pursuing the work," he wrote, 
"in this quiet, leisurely way, without over-exertion or fatigue, 
or any sense of obligation to complete it in a given time, I have 
found it a continual source of pleasure." 

Not until the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, fifteen years 
afterward, did any book rouse such a furor in Boston. It was 
"the fashionable Christmas present of the season." Ten days 
after publication, Prescott wrote to Ticknor, who was then in 
Europe: "Their Catholic Highnesses have just been ushered into 
the world in two royal octavos. The bantling appeared on a 
Christmas morning, and certainly has not fallen still-born, but 
is alive and kicking merrily. How long its life may last is another 
question. Within the first ten days half the first edition of five 
hundred copies (for the publishers were afraid to risk a larger one 
for our market) has been disposed of, and they are now making 
preparations for a second edition, having bought of me twelve 
hundred and fifty copies. This sale, indeed, seems quite ridic- 
ulous. . . . The small journals have opened quite a cry in my 
favour, and while one of yesterday claims me as a Bostonlan, a 
Salem paper asserts that distinguished honour for the witch- 
town." And then Prescott goes on to make this singularly inter- 



TVilliam Hickling Prescott 185 

esting remark, illuminating the literary conditions of America 
as they were in the very year of Emerson's Phi Beta Kappa 
Address: "But, after all, my market and my reputation rest 
principally with England, and If your influence can secure me, 
not a friendly, but a fair notice there. In any one of the three or 
four leading journals. It would be the best thing you ever did 
for me, — and that Is no small thing to say." 

The English notices, upon which the success of an American 
book were then thought to depend, were not only fair and friendly, 
but they gave Prescott at once that seat at the high table of 
historians which he still occupies. The cautious Henry Hallam 
warned Prescott that "a book published in a foreign country" 
would not make its way rapidly in the English market, yet he 
expressed his belief that Prescott's work would "acquire by de- 
grees a classical reputation." Time has ratified this judgment. 
The verdict of fellow-historians and the long list of Prescott's 
memberships in the learned societies of Europe are less eloquent 
of his fame, to most readers, than the charming sentences with 
which Thackeray began The Virginians: "On the library wall of 
one of the most famous writers of America, there hang two crossed 
swords, which his relatives wore in the great War of Independ- 
ence. The one sword was gallantly drawn In the service of the 
King, the other was the weapon of a brave and honoured Repub- 
lican soldier. The possessor of the harmless trophy has earned 
for himself a name alike honoured In his ancestor's country and 
his own, where genius such as his has always a peaceful welcome." 

Prescott went serenely forward to his Conquest of Mexico, a 
theme surrendered to him through the generosity of Washington 
Irving, who had expected to work that rich mine himself. The cor- 
respondence between the two writers does honour to them both, 
but it bears out Mr. Ogden's impression that "Prescott did not 
fully realize what It cost Irving to abandon the project. The grace 
of the surrender hid its bitterness." But there was no bitterness, 
surely. In Prescott's own surrender, a few years later, of a portion 
of his Spanish field to Motley. This was before the publication 
of Prescott's Conquest of Peru, and when only a few men knew 
that he intended to write the History of Philip the Second. Motley 



1 86 The Saturday Club 

wrote in 1859 to William Amory, Prescott's brother-in-law, and, 
like Prescott and Motley, a member of the Saturday Club, a full 
acknowledgment of Prescott's courtesy in offering him every pos- 
sible aid. "He assured me," said Motley, "that he had not the 
slightest objections whatever to my plan [of writing The Rise of 
the Dutch Republic], that he wished me every success, and that, if 
there were any books in his library bearing on my subject that 
I liked to use, they were entirely at my service." And Motley 
concludes this letter, which was written from Rome on the day 
he heard of Prescott's death, with these words: "Although it 
seems easy enough for a man of world-wide reputation thus to ex- 
tend the right hand of fellowship to an unknown and struggling 
aspirant, yet I fear that the history of literature will show that 
such instances of disinterested kindness are as rare as they are 
noble." 

Yet this nobility of tone in Prescott, evidenced by the lesser 
as well as by the greater acts of his life, seemed, and was, the 
normal expression of his nature. "You have had," wrote Dean 
Milman to him once, " I will not say the good fortune, rather the 
judgment to choose noble subjects." Perhaps "instinct" would 
have been a better word than either "good fortune" or "judg- 
ment," the instinct of a happy man viewing the world in all its 
length and breadth with a generous eye. "He could be happy 
in more ways," said his friend Theophllus Parsons, "and more 
happy in every one of them, than any other person I have ever 
known.'* This is also the testimony of his friends William H. 
Gardiner, Sumner, and Longfellow. He radiated happiness as 
spontaneously as other men diffused gloom. He did not possess 
what is called a philosophic mind, either as a historian or a 
man, but once, at least, he tried to analyze in his diary the secret 
of his enjoyment of life. It was dated May 4, 1845. 

"My forty-ninth birthday," he says, "and my twenty-fifth 
wedding-day; a quarter of a century the one, and nearly half a 
century the other. An English notice of me last month speaks of 
me as being on the sunny side of thirty-five. My life has been 
pretty much on the sunny side, for which I am indebted to a sin- 
gularly fortunate position in life; to inestimable parents, who both, 



TVilliam Hickling Prescott 187 

until a few months since, were preserved to me in health of mind 
and body; a wife, who has shared my few troubles real and imag- 
inary, and my many blessings, with the sympathy of another 
self; a cheerful temper, in spite of some drawbacks on the score 
of health; and easy circumstances, which have enabled me to 
consult my own inclinations in the direction and the amount 
of my studies. Family, friends, fortune, — these have furnished 
me materials for enjoyment greater and more constant than is 
granted to most men. Lastly, I must not omit my books; the love 
of letters, which I have always cultivated and which has proved 
my solace — invariable solace — under afflictions mental and bod- 
ily, — and of both I have had my share, — and which have given 
me the means of living for others than myself, — of living, I 
may hope, when my own generation shall have passed away. If 
what I have done shall be permitted to go down to after times, 
and my soul shall be permitted to mingle with those of the wise 
and good of future generations, I have not lived in vain." 

That sounds, somehow, as if Cicero had written it. But one 
could never be sure that Cicero quite meant what he said, and one 
feels sure that Prescott is telling the simple truth, in noble fashion. 

B. P. 



yohn Greenleaf TVhittier 189 

courageous and public-spirited of Americans, one must bear in 
mind the peculiar circumstances of Whittier's earlier life, the os- 
tracism which he had tacitly accepted during the darkest days of 
the anti-slavery cause, and a kind of fiery reluctance toward con- 
ventionalism, which was inherited from his Quaker ancestry and 
which flashed out in the old man's eyes from time to time until 
death closed them. He had fought the "Cotton Whigs" of State 
Street too bitterly to stretch his legs under respectable Boston 
mahogany and feel quite at ease in Zion. He liked, indeed, to sit 
on a barrel in an Amesbury grocery shop and talk politics with his 
neighbours. For many a year he was a skilful lobbyist for good 
causes at the State House in Boston. James G. Blaine, himself 
an astute political card-player, thought Whittier the shrewdest 
natural politician he had ever known, and Senator George F. 
Hoar speaks of him in the Autobiography as "one of the wisest and 
most discreet political advisers and leaders who ever dwelt in the 
Commonwealth." But the Quaker's delicate manipulation of men 
and measures was mainly through the medium of personal corre- 
spondence and private interviews. He avoided public gatherings 
as far as possible, though it is well known that he was prouder 
of having his name upon the list of members of the Anti-Slavery 
Convention of 1833 in Philadelphia than of having it upon the 
title-page of any book. But though Whittier preferred to live a se- 
cluded life, he was no mere recluse, and he was by no means averse 
in the eighteen-fifties to bookish talk with a few Boston friends. 
In a letter to Miss Nora Perry, in 1887, he gives a pleasant picture 
of a little company in which Whipple was a leading figure: — 

"Whipple was one of the first to speak a good word for me in 
the North American Review. I used to meet him whenever I came 
to Boston, and he and Fields, and Haskell, editor of the Boston 
Transcript, and I used to get together at the 'Old Corner Book- 
Store' or at a neighbouring restaurant, where we got cofi"ee and 
chatted pleasantly of men and books. There were others doubtless 
with us — I think probably Underwood and Starr King, and later, 
J. R. Osgood. I used to think Whipple said his best things on such 
occasions." 

Whittier's friend and biographer Underwood, the real originator 



190 The Saturday Club 

of the Atlantic Monthly, and the tireless promoter of those Atlan- 
tic dinners which were long confused with the Saturday Club din- 
ners, notes Whittier's reluctance to attend formal gatherings: — 

"The publishers, Phillips, Sampson & Co., had handsome quar- 
ters on Winter Street, and Abolitionists, who gathered there, 
— Whittier, Emerson, Mrs. Stowe, Edmund Quincy, Professor 
Lowell, Theodore Parker, and others, as well as the more purely 
literary contributors, such as Longfellow, Holmes, Prescott, 
Motley, Norton, Cabot, and Trowbridge, — made the place an 
attractive centre. . . . The leading writers of the Atlantic were 
social, and were accustomed to dine together once a month; but 
Whittier, who was abstemious from necessity and habit, seldom 
came to the dinners. On account of delicate health he had ac- 
customed himself to simple fare, and he never tasted wine or used 
tobacco; so that the meeting, so attractive to others, had few 
charms for him beyond social converse." 

The late Colonel T. W. Higginson, another biographer of 
Whittier, seems to imply a more frequent attendance at these 
Atlantic Club dinners, where Higginson noted that Whittier 
"was one of the few who took no wine among that group of 
authors. ... At the dinners of the Atlantic Club, during the first 
few years of the magazine, I can testify that Whittier appeared, 
as he always did, simple, manly, and unbecomingly shy, yet ret- 
icent and quiet. If he was overshadowed in talk by Holmes at 
one end and by Lowell at the other, he was in the position of 
every one else, notably Longfellow, but he had plenty of humour 
and critical keenness and there was no one whose summing up 
of affairs was better worth hearing. . . . His unmoved demeanour, 
as of a delegate sent from the Society of Friends to represent the 
gospel of silence among the most vivacious talkers, recalled Haz- 
litt's description of the supper parties at Charles Lamb's, — 
parties which included Mrs. Reynolds, * who being of a quiet turn, 
loved to hear a noisy debate.'" 

Miss Nora Perry records a characteristic conversation with 
Whittier about winning personal recognition through one's writ- 
ings. "I don't like notoriety," said the old poet. "I don't like 
that part of personal recognition, which, when I get into a car, 



yohn Green leaf TVhittier 1 9 ^ 

makes people nudge their neighbours and whisper, 'That's Whit- 
tier!'" Genuine as was this desire to avoid publicity, there is also 
no question that Whittier's good sense often told him that he 
paid some penalty for his detachment from the intellectual life of 
cities. "I feel myself," he wrote to Bayard Taylor in 1871, "the 
need of coming into nearer relations to the great life of our cen- 
tres of civilization and thought, and if I were younger and stronger 
I should certainly spend my winters in Boston." 

Whittier seems, indeed, to have enjoyed his occasional attend- 
ance upon the meetings of that Radical Club which has been agree- 
ably described by Mrs. John T. Sargent. It was here that he 
made one of his very few speeches, at the memorial service after 
Charles Sumner's death. Colonel Higginson has described this 
quaint utterance of the shy poet: — 

"If he had any one firm rule, it was to avoid making a speech, 
and yet when, being called on unexpectedly to speak at a private 
service on the death of Charles Sumner, he rose and told offhand 
a story of the interment of a Scotch colonel, with military hon- 
ours. By mischance an unfriendly regiment had been detailed to 
fire a salute over his grave, seeing which, an onlooker said, 'If the 
Colonel could have known this, he would not have died.' — 'So I 
feel,' said Mr. Whittier, 'if my friend Sumner could have known 
that I should have been asked to speak at his memorial service, 
he would not have died.'" 

Whittier's acquaintance with Sumner dated from the latter's 
undergraduate days at Harvard, and had ripened into the warm- 
est admiration. When the Legislature of Massachusetts, in 1873, 
passed a vote of censure upon Sumner for his proposal that the 
colours of the national regiments should not bear the names of the 
battles of the Civil War in which they had been carried, Whittier, 
with his old political skill, drew up and circulated a memorial to 
the Legislature asking that the vote be rescinded. Longfellow and 
other members of the Saturday Club signed the memorial, and in 
1874 the unjust resolution of censure was expunged. 

The bond between Whittier and Sumner was their passion for 
the cause of anti-slavery. Whittier's friendship for Lowell had 
the same origin. Lowell had urged Whittier in 1844 "to cry aloud 



192 'The Saturday Club 

and spare not against the cursed Texas plot," and the result was 
Whlttier's stirring "Texas: Voice of New England." Four years 
later came Lowell's well-known lines on Whittier in "A Fable 
for Critics": — 

"All honour and praise to the right-hearted bard 
Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard, 
Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slave 
When to look but a protest in silence was brave." 

The friendship lasted to the end. When Lowell became editor 
of the Atlantic he called constantly upon Whittier for contribu- 
tions. There is a pleasant note from Whittier to his editor about 
one of these poems, just after the Massachusetts Legislature had 
made Whittier an overseer of Harvard in 1858. "Let me hear 
from thee in some way," wrote the Quaker to the dilatory editor. 
"If thee fail to do this, I shall turn thee out of thy professor's 
chair, by virtue of my new office of overseer." 

Whittier's relations with Emerson were friendly, but never inti- 
mate. He had welcomed Emerson's "Concord Address" of 1844 
in an editorial which recorded his impatience that Emerson had 
not spoken out earlier on the anti-slavery issue: "With a glow of 
heart, with silently invoked blessings, we have read the address 
whose title is at the head of this article. We had previously, we 
confess, felt half indignant that, while we were struggling against 
the popular current, mobbed, hunted, denounced from the legis- 
lative forum, cursed from the pulpit, sneered at by wealth and 
fashion and shallow aristocracy, such a man as Ralph Waldo 
Emerson should be brooding over his pleasant philosophies, writ- 
ing his quaint and beautiful essays, in his retirement on the 
banks of the Concord, unconcerned and 'calm as a summer morn- 
ing.' . . . How could he sit there, thus silent.? Did no ripple of the 
world's agitation break the quiet of old Concord.'"' But Emer- 
son's later attacks upon the slave power, in magnificent verse and 
prose, were more than full atonement, Whittier thought, for 
his initial tardiness. 

Although Whittier wrote poems about several members of the 
Saturday Club, — Sumner, Fields, Lowell, Agassiz, — and al- 
though the last poem he ever composed was addressed to Oliver 



yohn Green leaf JVhittier 193 

Wendell Holmes, it remains true that he never came into very- 
close personal relations with any of them, unless an exception be 
made of Whipple and Fields. He was respected and admired by 
the Club group, but after all he had had to fight his own battles 
single-handed in his youth, and in his old age he remained a man 
apart from confidential intimacies with other men. Mrs. Fields 
doubtless understood him better than her husband did. 

"His most familiar acquaintances," said his biographer George 
R. Carpenter, "were almost invariably women; and this was nat- 
ural. Ascetic in life, not touching wine or tobacco, unused to 
sport, frail of health, isolated in residence, without employment 
that brought him into regular contact with his fellows, reticent 
and shy, there was no line of communication open between his 
life and that of men of robust and active habits, whose peer he 
really was. Women understood better his prim and gentle ways, 
his physical delicacy, his saintly devotion to spiritual ideals. His 
most frequent correspondents were women — Lucy Larcom, Alice 
and Phoebe Cary, Celia Thaxter, Gail Hamilton, Mrs. Stowe, 
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Edith Thomas, Sarah Orne Jewett, Edna 
Dean Proctor, Mrs. Fields, Mrs. Clafiin — and his letters to them 
show sincere friendship and community of spirit. In old age his 
was the point of view, the theory of life, of the woman of gentle 
tastes, literary interests, and religious feeling. The best accounts 
of his later life are those of Mrs. Clafiin and Mrs. Fields, in whose 
houses he was often a guest; and they have much to say of his 
sincere friendliness and quiet talk, his shy avoidance of notoriety 
or even of a large group of people, his keen sense of humour, his 
tales of his youth, his quaintly serious comments on life, his sud- 
den comings and goings, as inclination moved, and of the rare 
occasions when, deeply moved, he spoke of the great issues of 
religion with beautiful earnestness and simple faith. And it is 
pleasant to think of this farmer's lad, who had lived for forty years 
in all but poverty for the love of God and his fellows, taking an in- 
nocent delight in the luxury of great houses and in the sheltered 
life of those protected from hardship and privation. After his 
long warfare this was a just reward." 

Many members of the Saturday Club were present at the 



1 94 The Saturday Club 

dinner given by Whittier's publishers in honour of his seventieth 
birthday on December 17, 1877. A homely anecdote related by 
a kinswoman of the old poet gives an amusing picture of his re- 
luctance to make a public appearance. " I shall have to buy a new- 
pair of pants," he complained; but finally he accepted the invita- 
tion and sat gravely through the ordeal. The dinner owes much 
of its fame to-day to the ill-success of a humorous speech at- 
tempted by Mark Twain, whose biographer, Mr. Paine, has given 
a veracious account of Mark's daring effort to describe how three 
disreputable frontier tramps tried to pass themselves off upon a 
lonely miner as Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes. All three of 
these gentlemen were guests at the Whittier dinner, and though 
none of them seems to have resented Mark's elaborate joke, it 
proved a ghastly failure with the audience. His remarks are given 
in full in Mr. Paine's edition of his Speeches, and the Life of Mark 
Twain gives unsparing record of the humourist's contrition, his 
apologies to Emerson, Holmes, and Longfellow, and finally the 
delightful revulsion of feeling in which, many years later, he con- 
firmed his faith that it was really a good speech after all! Mr. 
Howells, who presided at the dinner, and introduced Mark Twain, 
had his own sorrows over the catastrophe, as he has recorded hu- 
morously in his My Mark Twain. Not the least amusing aspect 
of the affair is the fact that Mr. Clemens did not quite dare to 
send to the guest of honour a copy of the letter of apology which 
he addressed to the other poets. 

" I wrote a letter yesterday, and sent a copy to each of the three. 
I wanted to send a copy to Mr. Whittier also, since the offence 
was done also against him, being committed in his presence and 
he the guest of the occasion, besides holding the well-nigh sa- 
cred place he does in his people's estimation; but I did n't know 
whether to venture or not, and so ended by doing nothing. It 
seemed an intrusion to approach him, and even Lily seemed to 
have her doubts as to the best and properest way to do in the 
case. I do not reverence Mr. Emerson less, but somehow I could 
approach him easier." This letter is a curiously interesting evi- 
dence of the impression made by Whittier's personality upon a 
reckless man of genius of the younger generation. 



yohn Green leaf TVhittier 195 

The celebration of Whittier's eightieth birthday, in 1887, called 
forth many tributes from his old friends of the Saturday Club. 
Senator George F. Hoar spoke of him with noble eloquence at a 
banquet in Boston: there was a testimonial signed by representa- 
tives of every State and Territory in the Union; and there were 
verses by Holmes, Lowell, Parkman, Hedge, and George F. Hoar 
of the Saturday Club, as well as poems by Walt Whitman and 
other well-known writers. Whittier spent the day at Oak Knoll, 
Danvers, and was able to receive a great company of distinguished 
guests. 

For nearly five years longer the aged poet survived. His last 
poem was written for Dr. Holmes's eighty-third birthday on 
August 29, 1892; and on September 7 of that year he passed 
away. Holmes's pathetic memorial verses close with this stanza: — 

"Lift from its quarried ledge a flawless stone; 

Smootli the green turf, and bid the tablet rise, 
And on its snow-white surface carve alone 

These words, — he needs no more, — Here Whittier lies." 

For that generation, indeed, there was no need to say more. 
"Whittier was not," as I have written elsewhere, "one of the 
royally endowed, far-shining, 'myriad-minded' poets. He was 
rustic, provincial; a man of his place and time in America. It is 
doubtful if European readers will ever find him richly suggestive, 
as they have found Emerson, Poe, and Whitman. But he had a 
tenacious hold upon certain realities: first, upon the soil of New 
England, of whose history and legend he became such a sympa- 
thetic Interpreter; next, upon 'the good old cause' of Freedom, 
not only In his own country but in all places where the age-long 
and still but half-won battle was being waged; and finally, upon 
some permanent objects of human emotion, — the hill-top, shore, 
and sky, the fireside, the troubled heart that seeks rest in God. 
Whittier's poetry has revealed to countless readers the patient 
continuity of human life, its fundamental unity, and the ultimate 
peace that hushes its discords. The utter simplicity of his Quaker's 
creed has helped him to interpret the religious mood of a genera- 
tion which has grown Impatient of formal doctrine. His hymns 
are sung by almost every body of Christians, the world over. It 



19^ 'The Saturday Club 

is unlikely that the plain old man who passed quietly away in a 
New Hampshire village on September 7, 1892, aged eighty-five, 
will ever be reckoned one of the world-poets. But he was, in the 
best sense of the word, a world's-man in heart and in action, a 
sincere and noble soul who hated whatever was evil and helped 
to make the good prevail; and his verse, fiery and tender and un- 
feigned, will long be cherished by his country-men." 

B. P. 



Chapter VI 

1859 

In smiles and tears, in sun and showers. 

The minstrel and the heather. 
The deathless singer and the flowers 

He sang of live together. 

Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns! 

The moorland flower and peasant! 
How, at their mention, memory turns 

Her pages old and pleasant! 

But who his human heart has laid 

To Nature's bosom nearer? 
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid 

To love a tribute dearer? 

Whittier 

THE notable event in the first month of this year was the 
celebration on January 25 of the centennial birthday of 
Robert Burns. Whether or no the Saturday Club were the movers, 
it is certain that many of the members were there, and brought 
tributes to Scotland's Poet of the People. Holmes, Lowell, Whit- 
tier had written poems, and Emerson spoke. He so warmed 
to this occasion that many of those who heard him believed 
that his words were given him on the moment of utterance. Yet he 
never trusted himself on important occasions in extempore speech, 
and the manuscript remains as evidence.^ 

Longfellow wrote to Fields: "I am very sorry not to be there. 
You will have a delightful supper, or dinner, whichever it is; and 
human breath enough expended to fill all the trumpets of Iskan- 
der for a month or more.^ Alas! ... I shall not be there to ap- 
plaud! All this you must do for me; and also eat my part of the 

' Printed in the Miscellanies in the Riverside and Centenary Editions of Emerson's 
Works. 

_ ^ The reference is to a poem by Leigh Hunt, which was a favourite of Longfellow's. Its 
title is "The Trumpets of Doolkarnein." Iskander was an Asiatic version of Alexander. 



19^ T'he Saturday Club 

haggis which I hear is to grace the feast. This shall be your duty 
and your reward." 
This is Holmes's poem: — 

"His birthday. — Nay, we need not speak 
I The name each heart is beating, — 

Each glistening eye and flushing cheek 
In light and flame repeating! 

" We come in one tumultuous tide, — 
One surge of wild emotion, — 
As crowding through the Frith of Clyde 
Rolls in the Western Ocean; 

"As when yon cloudless, quartered moon 
Hangs o'er each storied river, 
The swelling breasts of Ayr and Doon 
With sea-green wavelets quiver. 

"The century shrivels like a scroll, — 
The past becomes the present, — 
And face to face, and soul to soul, 
We greet the monarch-peasant. 

"While Shenstone strained in feeble flights 
With Corydon and Phyllis, — 
While Wolfe was climbing Abraham's heights 
To snatch the Bourbon lilies, — 

"Who heard the wailing infant's cry. 
The babe beneath the sheeling, 
Whose song to-night in every sky 
Will shake earth's starry ceiling, — 

"Whose passion-breathing voice ascends 
And floats like incense o'er us. 
Whose ringing lay of friendship blends 
With labour's anvil chorus.'' 

"We love him, not for sweetest song, 
Though never tone so tender; 
We love him, even in his wrong, — 
His wasteful self-surrender. 

"We praise him, not for gifts divine, — 
His Muse was born of woman, — 



iS59 



199 



His manhood breathes in every line, — 
Was ever heart more human? 

"We love him, praise him, just for this: 
In every form and feature, 
Through wealth and want, through woe and bliss, 
He saw his fellow-creature! 

"No soul could sink beneath his love, — 
Not even angel blasted; 
No mortal power could soar above 
The pride that all outlasted! 

"Ay! Heaven had set one living man 
Beyond the pedant's tether, — 
His virtues, frailties, He may scan 
Who weighs them all together! 

"I fling my pebble on the cairn 
Of him, though dead, undying; 
Sweet Nature's nursling, bonniest bairn, 
Beneath her daisies lying. 

"The waning suns, the wasting globe, 
Shall spare the minstrel's story, — 
The centuries weave his purple robe, 
The mountain-mist of glory!" 

Two days later, the Club lost from its desired membership 
William Hickling Prescott, brave, genial and well-beloved man, 
and devoted scholar, in spite of his cruel loss of sight. It is not 
surely known whether he had yet attended one meeting of the 
Club. His loss was sorely felt in the Boston and Cambridge 
community. 

Sumner, grieved at the loss of this dear friend, and neighbour 
in Boston, wrote from Montpellier, in France, that his death was 
announced in all the Paris papers. "The current of grief and 
praise is everywhere unbroken. Perhaps no man so much in 
people's mouths was ever the subject of so little unkindness. 
How different his fate from that of others! Something of that 
immunity which he enjoyed in life must be referred to his beau- 
tiful nature in which enmity could not live." 



2 00 The Saturday Club 

The Atlantic was now growing in fame and circulation. Lowell 
was writing articles on Shakspeare. A neatly hidden joke lay- 
in one of these, as follows: "To every commentator who has 
wantonly tampered with the text, or obscured it with his inky 
cloud of paraphrase, we feel inclined to apply the quadrisyllable 
name of the brother of Agis, King of Sparta." Felton was able 
to explain the joke. Agis's brother was called Eudamidas. 

The Club celebrated Lowell's fortieth birthday, February 22. 
Dr. Holmes had written a poem which I do not find included in 
his volume. 

Emerson was anxious not to fail in his tribute, but had diffi- 
culty with it; yet at length it came, not, however, satisfactory 
to him. The prophecy, at its end, of Lowell's public service of 
the Country seems remarkable, and may justify its presenta- 
tion here. 

BIRTHDAY VERSES FOR JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

As I left my door 

The Muse came by; said, "Whither away?" 
I, well pleased to praise myself 
And in this presence raise myself, 
Replied, "To keep thy bard's birthday." 
"Oh happy morn! Oh, happy eve! " 
Rejoined the Muse. " And dost thou weave 
For noble wight a noble rhyme, 
And up to song through friendship climb? 
For every guest 
Ere he can rest 

Plucks for my son or flower or fruit 
In sign of Nature's glad salute." 
Alas! Thou know'st, 
Dearest Muse, I cannot boast 
Of any grace from thee. 
To thy spare bounty, Queen, thou ow'st 
No verse will flow from me. 
Beside, the bard himself, profuse 
In thy accomplishment. 
Does comedy and lyric use. 
And to thy sisters all too dear. 
Too gifted, than that he can choose 
But raise an eyebrow's hint severe 
On the toiling good intention 



iS59 



20I 



Of ill-equipped inapprehension. 
'The bard is loyal," 

Said the Queen 

With haughtier mien, 
* And hear thou this, my mandate royal; 

Instant to the Sibyl's chair. 

To the Delphic maid repair; 

He has reached the middle date. 

Stars to-night which culminate 

Shed beams fair and fortunate. 

Go inquire his horoscope, 

Half of memory, half of hope." 



From Paques to Noel 
Prophets and bards, 
Merlin, Llewelleyn, 
High born Hoel, 
Well born Lowell, — 
What said the Sibyl, 
What was the fortune 
She sung for him? 
Strength for the hour. 

Man of sorrow, man of mark, 
Virtue lodged in sinew stark, 
Rich supplies and never stinted, — 
More behind at need is hinted; 
Never cumbered with the morrow, 
Never knew corroding sorrow; 
Too well gifted to have found 
Yet his opulence's bound; 
Most at home in mounting fun. 
Broadest joke and luckiest pun. 
Masking in the mantling tones 
Of a rich laughter-loving voice, 
In speeding troops of social joys, 
And in volleys of wild mirth 
Pure metal, rarest worth. 
Logic, passion, cordial zeal 
Such as bard and martyr feel. 

Strength for the hour. 
For the day sufficient power, 
Well advised, too easily great 
His large place to antedate. 



2 02 "The Saturday Club 

But, if another temper come, 

If on the sun shall creep a gloom, 

A time and tide more exigent. 

When the old mounds are torn and rent, 

More proud, more strong competitors 

Marshall the lists for emperors, — 

Then the pleasant bard will know 

To put the frolic mask behind him 

Like an old, familiar cloak, 

And in sky-born mail to bind him, 

And single-handed cope with Time, 

And parry and deal the thunder-stroke. 

In March, Emerson's journal shows that he read his lecture 
*' Clubs "^ at the Freeman Place Chapel in Boston, which showed 
how much he, a secluded scholar, valued the opportunity and 
refreshment which they gave; and also how he realized the ne- 
cessity of carefully considered membership which should prevent 
heart-burnings in those not chosen. 

Longfellow records, in his diary, "Agassiz triumphant with 
his new Museum, having a fund of over two hundred thousand 
dollars." And, in June, that Agassiz goes to Switzerland, "where 
he is to pass the summer with his mother at Lausanne." 

Early in May, Dr. Howe wrote to Mr. Forbes, speaking highly 
of "Captain" John Brown, evidently wishing that he should have 
an opportunity to interest Mr. Forbes in the Free-State cause in 
Kansas. Mr. Forbes sympathized with the Northern settlers in 
their brave struggle, but, as an important officer in the new Hanni- 
bal and St. Joseph Railroad, in Missouri, could not show this 
openly. He, however, invited Brown out to Milton to spend the 
night, and gathered his good neighbours to hear his story of the 
Kansas bloody persecutions. He gave Brown one hundred dol- 
lars for use in the Free-State cause, little knowing of the use he 
would make of it for his secret Virginia plans in a few weeks. 

Brown had to go by a very early train. In a letter written soon 
after, Mr. Forbes tells that when the parlour girl rose early to 
open the house, "she was startled by finding the grim old soldier 
sitting bolt upright in the front entry, fast asleep; and when her 

* Printed in Society and Solitude. 



i859 



203 



light awoke him, he sprang up and put his hand into his breast- 
pocket, where, I have no doubt, his habit of danger led him to 
carry a revolver." He then mentions how, by an odd chance, 
the very next day Governor Stewart, the pro-slavery Governor 
of Missouri (who had set a price of ^3,250 on John Brown's head), 
"appeared on railroad business, and he too passed the night at 
Milton, little dreaming who had preceded him in my guest room." 

In this year Governor Banks appointed Judge Hoar a justice 
of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. 

August brought an anniversary promising in its kind, and 
happy in its celebration. Fifty years had made good the record 
of the son whose birth his Reverend father had so unappreciatively 
entered in his journal. Yet the love and honour felt for Holmes 
in 1859 the more than a third of a century of life still before him 
was to increase. 

Longfellow writes in his journal: "Drove up to town to dine with 
Dr. Holmes's friends on his fiftieth birthday. Felton presided. 
A delightful dinner. Holmes made a charming little speech with 
some verses at the end to round it off; after which I came away, 
having to drive back to Nahant." 

Mr. Emerson had evidently been asked to make the address, 
which he read, as follows: — 

"Mr. President, — When I read the Atlantic, I have had much 
to think of the beneficence of wit, its vast utility; the extreme 
rarity — out of this presence — of the pure article. Science has 
never measured the immense profundity of the Dunce-power. The 
globe of the world — the diameter of the solar system — is noth- 
ing to it. Everywhere, a thousand fathoms of sandstone to a tea- 
spoonful of wit. And yet people speak with apprehension of the 
dangers of wit, as if there were or could be an excess. 

"We all remember, in 1849, it was thought California would 
make gold so cheap that perhaps it would drive lead and zinc 
out of use for covering roofs and sink-spouts, but here we have 
had a Mississippi River of gold pouring in from California, Aus- 
tralia, and Oregon for ten years, and all has not yet displaced 
one pewter basin from our kitchens, and I begin to believe that 
if Heaven had sent us a dozen men as electrical as Voltaire or 



2 04 "The Saturday Club 

Sidney Smith, the old Dulness would hold its ground, and die 
hard. 

"Why, look at the fact. Whilst, once, wit was extremely rare 
and sparse-sown, — rare as cobalt, rare as platina, — here comes 
the Doctor and flings it about like sea-sand, threatens to make it 
common as newspapers, is actually the man to contract to fur- 
nish a chapter of Rabelais or Sidney Smith once a month — 
bucketfuls of Greek fire against tons of paunch and acres of 
bottom. Of course the danger was that he would throw out of 
employment all the dunces, the imposters, the slow men, the 
stock writers; in short, all the respectabilities and professional 
learning of the time. No wonder the world was alarmed. And 
yet the old House of Unreason stands firm at this day, when he 
is fifty years old, and he is bound to live a hundred in order to 
spend the half of his treasure. 

"Sir, I have heard that when Nature concedes a true talent, she 
renounces for once all her avarice and parsimony, and gives with- 
out stint. Our friend here was born in happy hour, with consent- 
ing stars. I think his least merits are not small. He is the best 
critic who constructs. Here is the war of dictionaries in this coun- 
try. In England, a philological commission to draft a new lexi- 
con. All very well; but the real dictionary is the correct writer, 
who makes the reader feel, as our friend does, the delicacy and 
inevitableness of every word he uses, and whose book is so charm- 
ing that the reader has never a suspicion, amid his peals of laughter, 
that he is learning the last niceties of grammar and rhetoric. 

"What shall I say of his delight in manners, in society, inele- 
gance, — in short, of his delight in Culture, which makes him a 
civilizer whom every man and woman secretly thanks for valu- 
able hints.'* 

"What, then, of his correction of popular errors in taste, in 
behaviour, in the uncertain sciences, and in theology, attested 
by the alarm of the synods .f* 

"And this is only possible to the man who has the capital merit 
of healthy perception, who can draw all men to read him; whose 
thoughts leave such cheerful and perfumed memories, that when 
the newsboy enters the car, all over the wide wilderness of Amer- 



1859 



205 



ica, the tired traveller says, 'Here comes the Autocrat to bring me 
one half-hour's absolute relief from the vacant mind.' 

"Now, when a man can render this benefit to his country, or 
when men can, I cannot enter into the gay controversy between 
the rival Helicons of Croton and Cochituate, but I desire all men 
of sense to come into a Mutual Admiration Society, and to honour 
that power. The heartier the praise, the better for all parties. 
For, really, this is not praise of any man. I admire perception 
wherever it appears. That is the one eternal miracle. I hail the 
blessed mystery with ever new delight. It lets me into the 
same joy. Who is Wendell Holmes.'' If it shines through him, it 
is not his, it belongs to all men, and we hail it as our own." 

In October, Charles Sumner — after three years of suffering 
and disability and the enduring of very painful treatment in Paris 
in the endeavour of Dr. Brown-Sequard to restore his nervous 
system from the disastrous effects upon it of the brutal assault 
on him in the Senate Chamber — returned to America "a well 
man," and was soon to become a piember of the Club. 

At the end of that month the Ci)untry was thrown into a state 
of great political excitement, portending, and hastening, the great 
conflict that was to follow so soon — John Brown's raid in Vir- 
ginia and seizure of the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry. 
This act of desperate courage, and of treason, undertaken by a 
few men for humanity at the bidding of their consciences, moved 
many Northern men; but especially did so the wounded John 
Brown's constancy and dignity during his trial and, at the end, 
his simple and high statement of his motives, surpassing Lincoln's 
Gettysburg Speech.^ Mr. Emerson spoke in public on his behalf; 

* Because of the interest of many of our members in John Brown's character and his 
unselfish fight against human slavery for years; also because Redpath's Life of Brown is 
now rarely seen or read, I here introduce the greater part of his final speech in Court: — 

"Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly 
proved . . . had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the so-called great, 
or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, 
or any of that class, and suflPered and sacrificed what I have in this interference — it would 
have been all right, and every man in this Court would have deemed it an act worthy of 
reward rather than punishment. This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of 
the law of God. . . . That teaches me that all things 'whatsoever I would that men should 
do unto me I should do even so to them.' It teaches me further, to 'remember them that 
are in bonds as bound with them.' I endeavoured to act up to that instruction. I say I am 



2o6 The Saturday Club 

Governor Andrew was counsel for one of his men, and Dr. Howe 
was probably one of the few men in a general way aware that 
Brown had some such aggressive plan in mind. Howe's impatient 
spirit and early ventures as a militant Christian and patriot, 
and active helper of the helpless, made him look forward to some 
armed attack upon Slavery, instead of tolerating Border Ruffian 
outrages upon Freedom such as had been allowed in Kansas by 
President Pierce during his administration. 

Hawthorne, who had gladly resigned his office as Consul at 
Liverpool in 1851, had with his family lived first in Florence, and, 
in the autumn of 1858, they went to Rome for the winter. There 
his daughter was dangerously sick with malarial fever, so, as soon 
as they were able, they moved to England in the summer of 1859. 
They were at first at Leamington, and later moved to Redcar on 
the east coast, where they passed the winter. The Marble Faun 
possessed Hawthorne's brain, and he worked out the romance 
during the winter. He had been apprised of his election to the 
Club in the summer or autumn, but he did not come until the 
next summer. 

As usual when November's long evenings came, the lecture 
courses began, and several of our members found a hearing near 
or afar. In this year, Whipple began, in the Lowell Institute, his 
course on "Literature of the Age of Queen Elizabeth." 

yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have 
interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done, in behalf of His 
despised poor, was not wrong, but right. 

"Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of 
justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of 
millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust 
enactments — I submit: so let it be done." 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 

In the fourth year after the birth of the Club, three new members 
were chosen, well chosen, — strangely differing types of men, but 
for that very reason, as adding romance, wit, energetic virtue duly 
tempered by tact, this tripod-stay reenforced the quality, charm, 
stability of this institution. 

First on the list was Hawthorne, but lately returned from 
Liverpool and Manchester, corrected by Rome and Florence, to 
his Concord home snugly placed under the southeasterly slope 
sheltering the Boston Road for its first mile from the village, and 
looking over a broad expanse of meadows to Walden afar. There, 
like his neighbour, the woodchuck, with his second hole for safety, 
he rejoiced in his back door which gave him secure flight to the 
birch and pitch-pine grove on the hill. Here was the peace of 
solitude after the years of unsuitable office work or insistent cul- 
tivated society. Almost certainly it was a shock to him when he 
learned in England, months before his return home (June, i860), 
if our records are right, that he was chosen a member. He had 
tarried there, after leaving Italy, for nearly a year working on the 
Marble Faun. Very likely his friends hoped by this token of re- 
gard to lure him home. Mrs. Fields tells a story which shows that 
the solitary romancer had hesitated before taking the plunge. Mr. 
Fields, as publisher, necessarily had advantages in coming into 
relations even with such shy authors as Hawthorne and Whittier, 
and his geniality and his wife's charming hospitality won them to 
come to their pleasant home where they were likely to meet the 
next-door neighbour Dr. Holmes. The lady says: "He met Haw- 
thorne for the first time, I think, in this informal way. Holmes 
had been speaking of Renan, whose books interested him. Sud- 
denly turning to Hawthorne, he said, 'By the way, I would write 
a new novel if you were not in the field, Mr. Hawthorne.' ' I am 
not,' said Hawthorne, 'and I wish you would do it.' There was a 
moment's silence. Holmes said quickly, 'I wish you would come 
to the Club oftener.' 'I should like to,' said Hawthorne, 'but I 



2o8 ^he Saturday Club 

can't drink.' 'Neither can I.' 'Well, but I can't eat.' 'Never- 
theless, we should like to see you.' 'But I can't talk, either,' 
after which there was a shout of laughter. Then said Holmes, 
'You can listen^ though; and I wish you would.'" Holmes had 
his desire; Hawthorne at Club ate his dinner and mainly listened. 
I think it was Fields who said, "A hundred years ago Henry 
Vaughan seems almost to have anticipated Hawthorne's appear- 
ance when he wrote that beautiful line, — 

* Feed on the vocal silence of his eye.' " 

Norton said that, in choosing seats at table, Hawthorne tried to 
put himself under Longfellow's protection, or Emerson's. 

It should be in the natural order of things to place before the 
Exodus of this spinner of rare webs from his retired lodge, his 
Genesis. A poet had thus described it, years earlier: — 

"When Nature created him, clay was not granted 
For making as full-sized a man as she wanted, 
So, to fill out her model, a little she spared 
Of some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared, 
And she could not have hit a more excellent plan 
For making him fully and perfectly man." ^ 

In picturing the members of the Club whose fame has caused 
their stories to be most often told, it would seem impertinent here 
to follow closely the thread of their lives. 

But in considering Hawthorne's ruling solitary instinct in con- 
nection with inevitable social life, certain points may be brought 
up. First, we find the boy of fourteen, an awakening period, his 
father just dead, brotherless, and with his widowed mother and 
one sister, withdrawn from a busy seaport town to a lonely spot 
in Maine on the shores of Sebago Lake. Skating alone late in the 
evening on its ringing ice among the dark hills or wandering in 
the afternoons in the forest, the boy came face to face with his 
soul, and with Nature, too, before he was plunged among college 
boys. He said later, "It was there that I first got my accursed 
habit of solitude." Yet it is hard to think that he did not, in 
other mood, rejoice in those days. 

At Bowdoin, Longfellow was his classmate, but their temper- 

1 Lowell, in "A Fable for Critics." 



Nathaniel Hawthorne 209 

aments differed so widely that he was never a crony, as were 
Horatio Bridge, Cilley, and (though in an upper class) FrankHn 
Pierce. These seem to have initiated the boy into a probably 
rather mild conviviality with some fair Madeira, and thus brought 
him out of his shell. We are told that Hawthorne, still a boy, 
said to his mother that he would not get his living by the diseases, 
the quarrels, or the sins of men, so the author's profession was the 
only one open to him. He gratefully gives to Bridge, after the 
Tzvice-Told Tales came out, the credit of his becoming an author, 
first, by his faith in his writing; later, by his early aid Hawthorne's 
name was brought more prominently before the public than there- 
tofore. 

Bridge says of Hawthorne, "Though taciturn, he was invari- 
ably cheerful with his chosen friends, and there was much more 
of fun and frolic in his disposition than his published writings 
indicate." He also speaks of his "absolute truthfulness, loyalty 
to his friends, abhorrence of debt, great physical as well as moral 
courage, and a high and delicate sense of honour," and, in that 
connection, vouches for the remarkable tale of the young paladin, 
moved by a lady's complaint of rudeness or wrong from one of 
his friends, journeying to Washington to fight him in her cause. 
Happily the matter was easily cleared up without blood. 

Hon. Robert Rantoul has kindly contributed the following 
memories to this sketch: — 

"Of Hawthorne I had some personal knowledge. He frequented 
my father's ofHce. I came to Salem as a denizen In 1856, and in 
1865 I became Collector of the Port. Naturally the place was 
redolent of 'Hawthorne' tradition. The barrels of papers In the 
Custom-House attic, in which he professed to have discovered 
the 'Scarlet Letter,' remained in statu quo, — undisturbed in 
my day. The delightful tale of his old neighbour and landlord, 
Dr. Benjamin Franklin Brown, was not worn threadbare then. 
Hawthorne told Dr. Brown, — they were fellow-Democrats and 
Hawthorne hired his near-by house of the Doctor, and fled to him, 
by the back door, for refuge when cornered by an unwelcome caller, 
— Hawthorne told Dr. Brown that of course he had the 'Scarlet 
Letter' and would show it to him some day. Pressed repeatedly 



2 lO 



The Saturday Club 



to 'make good,' he finally said: 'Well, Doctor, I did have It, but 
one Sunday afternoon, when we were all away at meeting, the 
children got it and threw it into the fire.' 

" When Sir James Barrie was in Salem, it devolved upon me 
to show him about. He was wholly unprepared to find that there 
was such a piece of legislation on the statute books as the 'Scarlet 
Letter' law. I showed him the Colonial statute in the original 
type. He had thought of it, up to that time, only as a creation of 
Hawthorne's fancy. Another bit of realism in Hawthorne always 
interested me. The 'Eastern Land Claim,' which figures so largely 
in the Seven Gables^ was an actual claim existing in his family for 
more than a century, and purporting to vest in 'the heirs of John 
Hathorn, merchant, Esquire,' a considerable tract 'lying be- 
tween Dammaris Cotta and Sheep's Cutt Rivers, by the inley 
Winnegance and the Sea.' Robin Hood, an Indian Sagamore, 
made a deed of it, recorded in our registry in 1666." ^ 

It was surely a strange fall of the dice that made Hawthorne an 
official in the customs and consular services of the Government, 
varied and exacting, for a large fraction of his adult life. And 
almost equally strange seems his early volunteering in experimental 
community life. In the last, however, he found sustenance, for 
the time, and much to gratify his sense of humour; also material 
for a romance which is mistaken for a history. 

After that episode, when Hawthorne, newly married, had come 
to Concord for a time, Emerson notes: "Hawthorne boasts that 
he lived at Brook Farm during its heroic age; then all were inti- 
mate and each knew the other's work; priest and cook conversed 
at night of the day's work. Now they complain that they are sepa- 
rated and such Intimacy cannot be; there are a hundred souls." 

The kindly respect for each other of the two who, in diflFerent 
degrees, prized their solitude, always existed, yet they seldom 
really met. Once, in all the years, there was a success when Emer- 
son, in the ripeness of September, invited this new acquaintance 
to join him In a two days' walking excursion. 

* Other allusions to Hawthorne as a Salem citizen and as a United States Custom- 
House official may be found in Mr. Rantoul's article on The Poet of Salem in vol. x of the 
Essex Institute's Historical Collection for 1870. 



Nathaniel Hawthorne 211 

Of this pleasant sauntering in golden-rod season, between the 
orchards where the apple-heaps lay, or under green pines and red 
maples, Emerson wrote to Ward, on the last day of September, 
1842: "Hawthorne and I visited the Shakers at Harvard, made 
ourselves very much at home with them, conferred with them on 
their faith and practice, took all reasonable liberties with the 
brethren, found them less stupid and more honest than we looked 
for, found even some humour, and had our fill of walking and sun- 
shine." 

This word of praise of Hawthorne's work, usually all too gloomy 
for Emerson's liking, is worth recording in that same year: "Not 
until after our return did I read his 'Celestial Railroad' which has 
a serene strength which we cannot afford not to praise in this low 
life." 

The words of two geniuses of the place may also find room here. 

Emerson writes in his journal: "Ellery Channing made me 
laugh very heartily one day with equivocal compliments to Haw- 
thorne: 'that he had the undeniable test-faculty of narration, 
one event to every one hundred and forty pages; a cough took up 
ten pages, and sitting down in a chair six more.'" 

And Thoreau, teaching in Staten Island in that same summer, 
wrote in a home letter: "Hawthorne, too, I remember as one with 
whom I sauntered, in old heroic times, along the banks of the 
Scamander, amid the ruins of chariots and heroes. Tell him not 
to desert, even after the tenth year." 

When, under Emerson's guidance, Hawthorne came Into the 
Club's dining-room at Parker's, he probably hardly knew any- 
body there except his classmate Longfellow and Whipple; 
Lowell and Holmes perhaps slightly, and, of course, during his 
two short residences in Concord he must have met Judge Hoar. 
Longfellow, when a young professor of Belle s-Lettres at Harvard, 
had generously and eagerly called an indifferent public's atten- 
tion to Twice-Told Tales. Fields tells the following story showing 
that Hawthorne had been drawn under Longfellow's hospitable 
roof early : "Hawthorne dined one day with Longfellow, and 
brought with him a friend from Salem. After dinner the friend 
said : ' I have been trying to persuade Hawthorne to write a story, 



212 



The Saturday Club 



based upon a legend of Acadie, and still current there; a legend of 
a girl who, in the dispersion of the Acadians, was separated from 
her lover, and passed her life in waiting and seeking for him, and 
only found him dying in a hospital, when both were old.' Long- 
fellow wondered that this legend did not strike the fancy of Haw- 
thorne, and said to him: 'If you have really made up your mind 
not to use it for a story, will you give it to me for a poem?' To this 
Hawthorne assented, and moreover promised not to treat the sub- 
ject in prose till Longfellow had seen what he could do with it 
in verse. And we have Evangeline in beautiful hexameters, — a 
poem that will hold its place in literature while true affection 
lasts. Hawthorne rejoiced in this great success of Longfellow, and 
loved to count up the editions, both foreign and American, of this 
now world-renowned poem." 

Longfellow saw and ministered to his friend's owl-like instinct, 
when, from far Lenox, or from Concord, he ventured near the 
crowded city and took refuge in the Cambridge mansion. Mr. 
William Winter quotes Longfellow as saying: "Hawthorne often 
came into this room, and sometimes he would go there, behind 
the window-curtains, and remain in silent revery the whole even- 
ing. No one disturbed him; he came and went as he liked. He 
was a mysterious man." 

This strange Cornelius Agrippa showing to his readers in his 
magic glass, darkly, yet with a sombre dignity and beauty, phases 
of the Puritan New England life, had yet another side which they 
might only guess at, but not realize, unless they had had the for- 
tune at ten to devour the Wonder-Book or Tanglewood Tales, or 
better, while playing with his children, to have chanced on Haw- 
thorne in his own house. For something of the Eustace Bright 
of the Lenox early home always remained. His smile when we 
suddenly came upon him was delightful; for children were not 
to him little half-moulded and untamed lumps of creation, but 
rather estrays from Paradise bringing some of its airs with them, 
important in saving the human man from corruption. It was the 
unshaken belief in the winged horse of the little boy by his side 
that kept the half-doubting Bellerophon true to his watch — 
and thus the Chimsera was slain. The gloom of Hawthorne's 



Nathaniel Hawthorne 213 

tapestries is redeemed by the gold thread that the child or the 
young girl brings in. Though his first instinct was to flee when 
a visitor came to the house, if escape was too late he faced his 
duties of hospitality and even enjoyed the meeting. His consu- 
lar bread-winning in England was valuable, for through meeting 
all sorts of people and undergoing public dinners he was prepared 
for the lionizing in London and the more congenial social life in 
Rome which the Brownings and Storys made easier. His debt 
to his friendship with Longfellow he thus acknowledges: "You 
ought to be in England to gather your fame .... I make great 
play at dinner parties by means of you. Every lady — especially 
the younger ones — enters on the topic with enthusiasm; and my 
personal knowledge of you sheds a lustre on myself. Do come over 
and see these people!" In that same year, Longfellow wrote in his 
journal: "A soft rain falling all day long, and all day long I 
read the Marble Faun. A wonderful book; but with the old, dull 
pain in it that runs through all Hawthorne's writings." 

But a Hawthorne differing from any estifhating of the man that 
has appeared — except that Mr. Fields briefly touches on this new 
facet of this rare crystal — is found in the tragic story of Miss 
Delia Bacon, ^ and this story must find a place here. This lady 
of keen intelligence and nobility of character became utterly ab- 
sorbed in the philosophy of the works attributed to Shakspeare. 
After profound study of Bacon's writings, Miss Bacon became 
sure the plays and sonnets were the work of the latter and his 
friends. The secret of the real authorship she believed would be 
found in Shakspeare's coffin, but, unlike other advocates of 
Bacon's claims, she cared less about this point than that the world 
should, through her promptings and interpretations, learn the 
true science of all things, which the plays were written to unfold. 
On the slenderest means she went to England to complete her 
researches and perfect her work on this, to her, all-important 
service to the race. 

In poverty and solitude she worked. When strength and sup- 

^ See Delia Bacon, by Theodore Bacon (Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1888), and 
various mentions of this remarkable woman, in the Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence and 
Hawthorne's English Note-Books and Emerson's Journals. 



2 14 The Saturday Club 

plies were falling, for her family could no longer abet a fanaticism 
which they saw wearing her life out, she turned to the American 
Consul, a stranger to her, for aid. 

Hawthorne read her difficult manuscript and the long letters 
which she constantly wrote him. Her genius he recognized at 
once, but could not go with her the length of her conclusions. 
But from his own means he gave her aid, — and this most deli- 
cately, — without which she would have perished, and, what was 
more to her, showed sympathy and interest. 

He procured her a publisher and wrote a respectful and appre- 
ciative preface to her book. Through long months he gave his 
aid and furtherance and time, and this with utter patience, chiv- 
alrous courtesy, and, finally, forbearance, when, her body pros- 
trated and her mind deranged, she turned against him, her chief 
benefactor. Miss Bacon actually obtained permission from the 
church authorities at Stratford not only to spend a night by Shak- 
speare's grave, but to open it in the presence of two witnesses, 
yet at the last minute her courage failed, and the tomb keeps its 
secret. Soon after this, Miss Bacon had to be placed in an asylum 
and, not long after, gave up the life she had worn out in her 
mission. 

Hawthorne loved Leigh Hunt, but he said, after his return to 
Concord and his cordial reception into the Club immediately fol- 
lowing thereon, "As for other literary men of England, I doubt 
whether London can muster so good a party as that which as- 
sembles every month at the marble palace [Parker's] on School 
Street." 

Hawthorne was fortunate in his unusually happy relation with 
Mr. George Ticknor and Mr. James T. Fields, the heads of the 
leading publishing house, for he was dependent upon his pen 
for support, and, though firm enough when occasion demanded, 
and with a proper sense of his rights, he was modest about his 
writings and rather helpless as a business man. They were true 
friends as well as publishers and knew how thoughtfully to float 
him over barren times. 

Mr. Fields, in his Yesterdays with Authors^ dedicated to this 
Club, opens his notes on Hawthorne by a paragraph in which he 



Nathaniel Hawthorne 215 

speaks of him as "the rarest genius America has given to litera- 
ture — a man who lately sojourned in this busy world of ours, but 
during many years of his life 

'Wandered lonely as a cloud.' 

. . . His writings have never soiled the public mind with one un- 
lovely image." 

Of Hawthorne's presence at the Club Mr. Norton said: "It 
was always interesting. I was always glad to sit by him. There 
was individuality and difference in his talk which made it very 
attractive. I recall sympathetic expressions of his in regard to 
the war. His lack of sympathy with Sumner was marked. He 
disliked his magisterial tone." 

Mr. Norton said: "On one of the last occasions when I met Haw- 
thorne at the Club during the War, I got into a discussion with 
Judge Hoar — perhaps about some doings at Washington — Mr. 
Sumner's attitude, or the like — and the Judge was rather rough 
in arguing. When the controversy was over, Hawthorne turned 
to me and in his shy way said, *I'm glad you did n't give in.'" 
But the Judge took pleasure in having Hawthorne as his guest, 
with Emerson, in the drives home from Waltham, which have 
been mentioned and was glad of this, to him, only opportunity, 
outside the Club, of meeting his shy townsman, attractive, even 
if a Democrat. 

The delightful letter of Henry James to Emerson, after seeing 
Hawthorne for the first time at the Club dinner, is reserved for 
the sketch of this astonishing and witty philosopher. 

It should be remembered that Hawthorne, returning from 
Europe in i860, and dying in May, 1864, belonged to the Club 
but for a few years and these of increasing feebleness, troubled 
too by the war. 

This sketch shall end with the tribute of William Allingham, the 
refined and lovable Irish and English poet: "I sometimes love 
Hawthorne. The shy man, through his veil of fanciful sketch and 
tale, shows me more of his mind and heart than any pen-dipper 
of them all. What a pensive, sympathetic humanity makes itself 
felt everywhere. He is no pessimist, save as regards men's efforts 



2 1 6 T'he Saturday Club 

to alter the natural conditions of human life, and the natural 
effect of human actions. His fixed faith is that man is a spirit 
with his real life flowing from and to a finer world than that of 
the senses. Sometimes I don't love him so well; his attitude of 
spectator ab extra strikes a chill." 

E. W. E. 



THOMAS GOLD APPLETON 

The Appletons were establishing themselves in Ipswich five years 
after Boston was founded, but their adventurous courage was 
not exhausted, for as soon as the French and Indian War was over 
they founded New Ipswich among the hills in the northern forest. 
Again, when manufacturing began to compete with agriculture, 
two of the brothers moved to Boston. Nathan, years later, inter- 
ested in the power loom, became in turn a founder, with others, of 
a great industrial city, Lowell. So young Thomas, his older child, 
became a Beacon Hill Bostonian, on the occasion of his birth in 
1812 on the last day of March. He used to say, "I just missed 
being an April fool." 

Dr. Holmes, in his Life of Motley, tells of the happy companion- 
ship of those notable men who in their boyhood were neighbours 
near the head of Chestnut Street. They loved to dress up as 
heroes and bandits and act exciting scenes in the garret. "If one 
with a prescient glance could have looked in, . . . in one of the 
boys he would have seen the embryo dramatist of a nation's life- 
history, John Lothrop Motley; in the second, a famous talker and 
wit who has spilled more good things on the wasteful air in con- 
versation than would carry a 'diner-out' through half a dozen 
London seasons, and waked up, somewhat after the usual flowering 
time of authorship, to find himself a very agreeable and cordially 
welcomed writer — Thomas Gold Appleton. In the third he would 
have recognized a champion of liberty, known wherever that word 
is spoken; an orator whom to hear is to revive all the traditions 
of the grace, the commanding sway, of the silver-tongued eloquence 
of the most renowned speakers — Wendell Phillips." In after 
years, travelling divergent roads, the early bond was not entirely 
broken, though Phillips may have strained it, and the dramatic 
gift was still common property. 

Tom had the fortune to be sent to Round Hill School, wonder- 
ful for its day. John M. Forbes, who was there with him, speaks 
of him as then being a crack archer, — he kept some skill with the 



2 1 8 T^he Saturday Club 

long bow through life, — but the standards of character, taste, 
and reading that Mr. Cogswell strove to implant were a cause 
for young Appleton's gratitude in his later wandering life. 

Naturally he was sent to Harvard College, and without doubt 
was an amusing and popular classmate. When he graduated in 
183 1 there was no pressing need of engaging in work or studying 
a profession immediately. So of course he went to Europe, and 
her charm, constantly drawing him back, prevented his ever 
doing either. 

His father, a successful manufacturer, wished his son to follow 
in this promising path, but Tom said, "No, thank you! Arts and 
letters are what I care for. I will not waste my life." But in these 
he did not succeed. He used to say of himself, "I have the tem- 
perament of genius without the genius. That is the unfortunate 
thing." From youth to age the social instinct and talent mas- 
tered him. Eyes, ears, mind, were open and finely tuned to all that 
was beautiful, witty, interesting. From this material his quick 
appreciation and original mind and wit, sometimes unhallowed, 
would turn out a fabric amusing, charming, even startling to his 
company. Yet his wit seldom left a sting, for Appleton was very 
human and of quick sympathies. A lady who knew him well said 
that in telling a story of suffering to her he choked and the tears 
ran over. " Don't mind me," he said, " I get that from my mother." 
Mr. Dana, in his diary, thus characterizes him: "Tom is the prince 
of rattlers. He is quick to astonishment, and has humour and 
thought and shrewd sense behind a brilliant fence of light works." 

Appleton, in spite of being born a patrician, or, at any rate, 
an eques in Boston, was very independent of Beacon Street. He 
was the first young man in Boston who dared wear a mustache. 
His uncle William Appleton growled, "Tom, don't come into this 
room with that brush on your lips." 

Soon after graduating he went abroad for eighteen months. His 
joy surpassed that of a child, at each new experience in England. 
"We are full to repletion with ideas that no one has time to digest 
— none but an anaconda could, such is the glorious rush of im- 
pressions. I came over in a Trollopian spirit, but my first drive 
sank the cynic in the boy. I am in love with this my fatherland." 




9'i 



Thomas Gold Appleton 219 

After his mother's death, Tom went a second time to Europe 
with his father and two of his sisters, and two years were pleas- 
antly passed on the Continent. The family travelled in their own 
carriage for the most part, though Tom sometimes left them, to 
walk part of the way, rejoining them at appointed places. On 
one of these occasions he found young Mr. Longfellow of Portland 
in his place in the carriage. Neither of them could see, far in the 
future, the brotherly relation between them, perhaps due to that 
chance of travel. At Mainz they were detained for weeks by the 
illness of one of his sisters, but in that time Tom got more than 
enough of that remoter fatherland. He detested the coarse and 
guttural language, absurd beds, and wrote with vigour of the food. 
One evening he persuaded his reluctant father to go to the theatre 
and see "Hamlet" acted in German. He records, however, "We 
were both much edified and the tears came into our Appleton 
eyes." 

One of Appleton's friends, a lady, told of his delightful little 
bursts of temper when he would allow himself to run on, and 
became even dramatically imaginative. He once was denouncing 
Germans at the Club before Mr. Sam Ward, who valued them. 
Irritated by his amused silence, Appleton ran on about their 
manners, their speech, their over-praised literature, and at last 
burst out with a tale of a call made by his father, he accompany- 
ing, on a German from whom they had every reason to expect at 
least courtesy, but the absence of this amounted to positive rude- 
ness. Mr. Appleton had never experienced such a reception and 
hardly knew what to say, but Tom said that, boiling over with 
indignation, he stepped before him and shouted to the German, 
"Sir! Choose which of your features you wish to preserve, and I 
will take care of the rest!" 

In 1844, Appleton, after having spent twelve years In his 
"shuttlecock" life, — delightful sojourns in Europe, whence love 
for his family and Boston drew him home for months, — found 
himself full of tastes and interests and human relations, but with- 
out a profession, occupation, or even a commanding interest. In 
the presence of his father, active worker in private and public 
affairs, he felt with some mortification his difference from other 



220 



The Saturday Club 



young Bostonians. Yet he could not bring himself to assume du- 
ties for which he had no taste and felt no fitness. "And yet," he 
wrote to his father, "I cannot see that a man improving his 
character and mind, living modestly on a moderate income is 
wholly despicable. If he tries to do good, and to find the truth 
and speak it, I cannot see that he is inferior to a man who only 
toils, nobly, to be sure, but still without leaving himself time for 
much of these. . . . My ambition is my own, and it is as strong as 
any man's, but it has no triumphs which the world can appreci- 
ate or behold. It may not be a lofty or very useful one, but it is to 
the best of my abilities." 

So again the man with "the temperament of genius" followed 
his call, which was to enjoy, and then, happy, entertain or give 
pleasure to others with his social gift or cultivated taste, some- 
times also generous help. But he wrote in serious mood: "If an 
ardent wish to do good and be of some use indicates anything, I 
feel that some day I shall be better understood and loved for other 
reasons than at present. ... It is too late to achieve strict habits 
of business, but I shall be able to handle my talents so as to 
satisfy a little the natural demands of society upon me." 

So abroad again he went, bent upon the study of art in such 
time as he could spare from the delightful human race. He fell 
in with the young William Hunt and Richard his brother and 
travelled In Greece with them and their mother. There he was 
proud to find that the eyes of men sparkled as they spoke of his 
townsman Dr. Howe. He sent word to his sister from Constanti- 
nople, "Tell her the old enchantment lingers about these shores; 
that Fairyland begins with the blue entrances to the Dardanelles." 
Years later he wrote in the Atlantic ^'^ "The Greeks made an ideal 
for us all. Our best eyes see the world as Homer saw it; we our- 
selves seem to have built the Parthenon in some lucky dream." 

Mr. Appleton loved art and practised as an amateur. I do not 
know with whom he studied. But late in life he very much amused 
the unregenerate youth in one of the French ateliers by his re- 
marks and by his efforts in the life-class. He early copied Ra- 
phael's Madonna della Sedia with some success. He made also 

^ "The Flowering of a Nation," Atlantic Monthly, v, 28, 216. 



Thomas Gold Appleton 



22 I 



water-colours on the Nile, and at Nahant, his summer home. He 
made friends of Kensett, Church, Akers, Allen Gay, Darley, and 
other artists, and with William Story in Rome. He had a gener- 
ous idea of a critic's function; did not look first for faults, but 
had a quick eye and a genial word for some happy stroke in a 
picture even of a painter yet unrecognized. It was the same with 
books, "He was a most indulgent critic, making all allowance for 
the intention of the workman." 

Appleton and Emerson were both In Paris during the revolu- 
tion of 1848, but they met, perhaps for the first time, very pleas- 
antly on their return voyage to America in that year. 

Emerson wrote In his sea-journal, "In the cabin conversations 
about England and America, Tom Appleton amused us all by 
tracing all English performance home to the dear Puritans, and 
affirming that the Pope also was once in South America, and 
there met a Yankee, who gave him notions on politics and re- 
ligion." 

On each of his returns from the European paradise Appleton 
found increasing friction In America on the moral Issue of Slavery. 
He seems to have been early freed from "Cotton Conservatism," 
his generous spirit revolting at the steady encroachments of the 
slave power, and more at Boston subserviency. Though not an 
Abolitionist, he kept some friendship for Sumner, and admired 
his heroic stand for Freedom. In the presidential campaign of 
1856, Appleton wrote from Paris to his father that If Buchanan 
should come In, and follow Pierce's methods, "we could not, In 
Europe, pretend to love liberty." The gradual enslavement of 
the North "would be hard to bear, but might make us more 
humble and more willing to look after our sins." When at last the 
flag of his Country was fired upon, his angry patriotism flamed 
out. He was past the limit of military age, but he helped his friend 
Governor Andrew with the sinews of war and with active sym- 
pathy. 

But, to go back Into the decade before the war; Appleton's 
visits to Europe were less frequent because of the pleasure he 
found In being near his sister and Longfellow, now a brother, and 
presently of being "Uncle Tom," and he proved an ideal uncle. 



222 



The Saturday Club 



He had for some time a house in Phillips Place, Cambridge, to 
be near the family, and, in the summer, he shared a cottage with 
the Longfellows at Nahant for coolness, which pleasant and 
fashionable resort he baptized "Cold Roast Boston." 

One of his friends says that Mr. Appleton always had an active 
sense of the nearness of those who had left this life. "His faith 
in the unseen ran, like a bright thread, through all his currents 
of thought." This made him ready to investigate the so-called 
"spiritualism" of Hume and others, but he wearied of such 
manifestations, as coarse and material, yet held fast his theory 
"that the spirit world is ever close to the world of matter"; this 
made the memory and presence of lost friends ever near to him. 
Appleton's interest in the so-called "spiritual manifestations" 
brought him into relations with the believers. Thus, from London, 
he writes to Longfellow in 1856 about meeting Mrs. Browning 
and says: "She is a little concentrated nightingale, living in a 
bower of curls, her heart throbbing against the bars of the world. 
I called on them, and she looked at me wistfully, as she believes 
in the Spirits and had heard of me. Lady Byron, too, has sent 
for me to talk about it; but I do not know that I shall find time to 
go." Writing to Longfellow, a propos of some book on Immor- 
tality, he said: "There seems great soreness in the world at the 
place where soul and body dovetail. I recall an expression of Mr. 
Theodore Lyman to me, years ago: 'The bother of the Yankee,' 
said he, 'is that he rubs badly at the junction of soul and body.' 
As true a thing as was ever said; and he not much of a sayer of 
such things." 

Mr. Norton told a story showing Appleton's strong attraction 
to artists and his impulsive generosity. In Venice as he strolled 
through the Accademia, he spied a young man making a good copy 
of a picture. "Hullo! hullo!" said he; "that's doing pretty well." 
The young man flushed, surprised at this opening. "No," went on 
Appleton, "that's not bad at all. " After a little chat, during which 
the artist said he knew he must be Mr. Tom Appleton of whom 
he had heard, the latter said, "Look here, have you had any chance 
to see anything.'' Been to Egypt.'*" The young artist was pleased 
with this attention, and Appleton, finding that he had his family 



Thomas Gold Appleton 223 

in Venice, said, "Take me home to dinner and let me see the 
wife and daughter." He went, was pleased with the lady; said, 
"You '11 give me some American pumpkin pie? You '11 go to Egypt 
with me?" All went on an ideal voyage on the Nile in a dahabeahj 
and later through Syria, both of which journeys Mr. Appleton 
very pleasantly chronicled in books. 

Mr. Appleton was often moved to write verses inspired by his 
camping or yachting excursions in his native land. Whatever may 
be said of his poems, his prose style, when moved, is charming 
and artistic. 

He writes to Longfellow : — 

MiNEAH, Egypt, February 13, 1875. 

Dear Henry, — Behold me returned from a descent into 
Africa, where was no post and no railroad, but only Nature and 
History. I went as into a cloud; but, oh! the silver and gold lining 
of it, as the sun or the moon shone. It was weird and wonderful, 
and put me in relation with Speke and Grant and the other great 
travellers. I kept a faithful journal, and made endless sketches, 
all in water-colour. My friend Mr. Benson was very active, and 
in oil has a store of beauties. He and his family have proved de- 
lightful companions, and enjoyed every moment; not a sunset, 
nor a dish, was thrown away upon them. Oh, that you had our 
spring instead of the sulky, reluctant visitor I so well remember! 
Before my eyes is a sheet of green, such as only Egypt knows, 
and set in the gold of sand and cliff" which doubles its beauty. 
You must get Mr. Gay to tell you of these wonders; my space 
can do them no justice. 

None but a goose can see this country and not feel as if he were 
saluting a mother. At Beni-Hassan yesterday, I saw Homer and 
the Bible painted on the walls; and yet the life of to-day. These 
Egyptian children were indeed the fathers of all of us men since. 
Life here cannot escape from the old conditions. Our dethroned 
mast (for we row only, now) rests on a semicircle of iron iden- 
tical with one I saw yesterday on a boat of five thousand years 
ago. To walk in the shadow of such a date gives grandeur to 
life. Would you were here, and we should have a poem with a 



2 24 The Saturday Club 

fine old-crusty-port flavour. I have shut up my exuberant Muse 
in sonnets, and "my brain is still spinning more." 

Faithfully, 

T. G. Appleton. 

Here, by contrast, is a poem of Appleton's with the breath of 
Katahdin in it; no slightest hint of quiet, smooth England, gay 
Continental cities, or the ancient East can be felt. 

THE LOON 

When, swinging in his silent boat, 
The sportsman sees the happy lake 
Repeat the heavens which o'er him float, 
A quiet which no whispers break — 
Then, ah! that cry- 
Drops from the sky 
In mournful tones of agony. 

The spirit of the lonely woods, 

Of wastes unseen and soundless shores, 

The genius of the solitude 

In that complaint appealing pours — 

One voice of grief, 

Appealing, brief. 

As hopeless ever of relief. 

When evening breathes with perfumed air 

Delicious sadness, longings high, 

A pensive joy, untouched by care. 

Then hark, a laugh falls from the sky — 

A mocking jeer 

Floats o'er the mere, 

And Eve-born sorrows disappear. 

'T is thus when Nature overhears 
Our human needs of joy and woe 
Too much, these link it to our tears 
And shame us in their overflow; 
That laugh, that cry. 
To us come nigh 
And solitude's society. 

Mr. John T. Morse tells that Dr. Holmes "wrote, one day, to 
his friend, 'Of course your worst rival is your own talk, with which 



Thomas Gold Appleton 225 

people will always compare whatever you write; and I do not know 
that I can say more of this book than that it comes nearer your 
talk than anything else you have written.' " Of course he shone at 
the Club. In a little book in which Mr. Emerson jotted down some 
notes of his friends I find the following: — 

Appleton gave Bancroft's stepson, Alexander Bliss, the sobriquet 
of Arabia Felix. 

He said, "All good Bostonians expected when they died to go 
to Paris." 

When Longfellow oflFered his guests green turtle soup, Appleton 
asked, if that was not "some imitation of mock-turtle.'*" 

He advised some young ladies at Fields's house to carry horse- 
chestnuts. He said : "I have carried this one in my pocket these 
ten years, and in all that time have had no touch of rheumatism. 
Indeed, its action is retrospective, for I never had rheumatism 
before." 

To the old collegians proposing a club to meet only once in a 
decade, he offered the title, ''''Boors drinking after Tenters.''^ 

When it was proposed to put a chime of bells on Dr. Channing's 
church-tower, he said, they might play " Turn again, Huntington,''^ 
alluding to the recent conversion of the last pastor to the Church 
of England. 

Appleton said at dinner: "Canvas-back ducks eat the wild 
celery; and the common black duck, if it ate the wild celery, is 
just as good, — only, damn 'em, they won't eat it!" 

Mr. Norton in his later years wrote to Horace Furness: "I 
fear that you never knew the delightful Tom Appleton. His mem- 
ory is becoming faint, except in the hearts of a few old men like 
myself. This is the common fate — the common fate of the man 
whose charm is specially social and whose wit is the wit of the 
dinner-table. Well, Tom, who was a true bon-vivant, intellectu- 
ally as well as physically, and had a most cultivated sense of taste 
himself, used to say that we in New England suffer more in re- 
gard to that special sense from our Puritan tradition of the sinful- 
ness of worldly delights, than in respect to any other of the senses. 
In Philadelphia and Baltimore that sense has had its rights more 
carefully preserved. Yet every now and then there has been an 



2 2 6 'The Saturday Club 

exceptional instance of delicacy of taste among these restrained 
New Englanders, as, for instance, was Leverett Saltonstall's 
capacity of discrimination of sherries, about which there is a good 
story which I will tell you some day." 

But it is not right that Appleton should be remembered only as 
a hon-vivant and society wit. He was a loyal friend and a most 
affectionate son and brother, and, in his later years enjoyed to 
the utmost his Longfellow nieces and nephews, and, after their 
mother's terrible death, the wish to be in their neighbourhood 
made him less a wanderer. The Appleton ready sympathy ran 
through his life. He enjoyed seeing others enjoy and arranging 
pleasures for them. 

Appleton was public-spirited and actively interested in the 
growth and improvement of Boston. He was early one of the 
trustees of the Athenaeum in its Pearl Street days. The Public 
Library and the Museum of Fine Arts were just the kind of ad- 
vances in the community which he desired, and had the benefit of 
his services. The development of the Back Bay lands interested 
him. As soon as Commonwealth Avenue emerged from the marsh 
he built, near its head, a comfortable home at last, made attrac- 
tive by his books and pictures. 

From Miss Hale's pleasant biography, to which I am indebted, 
we learn that Mr. Appleton's correspondence for the later years was 
largely made up of letters to him acknowledging sums for all sorts 
of enterprises from those of large patriotic weight, philanthropic 
importance, or aesthetic attraction, to private gifts lifting loads 
from the humblest homes. He not only gave, but he made others 
give.- Miss Hale well describes her friend thus, "A man accom- 
plished in the difficult art of generous living." 



JOHN MURRAY FORBES 

With the shy romancer and the cheerful, unabashed wit and trav- 
eller there came into this company of men of letters, science, and 
law a man of a different stamp. Born at Bordeaux by chance of 
travel, of American parents, in 1814, he used to say, "I am as- 
sured my title to American citizenship is as good as anybody's," 
and he is best described as a great private citizen. What a force, 
and always for good, he was in the Country was known to few. 

His father, Ralph Forbes, was not successful in business, and 
died after a long sickness, still comparatively young, leaving his 
brave wife with seven children in narrow circumstances. 

When John Forbes, at fifteen, having finished his official school- 
ing, left Round Hill, Northampton, really better educated than 
many college graduates, to be boy in the counting-room of his 
maternal uncles, the Perkinses, his admirable teacher, Mr. Cogs- 
well, wrote to his mother: "It is not mere length of time in which 
he has been my pupil that attaches me strongly to him. A stronger 
tie is the uncommon worth and irreproachable character he has 
maintained in this relation." He was allowed small ventures in 
his uncles' China-bound ships, and by careful nursing, his capital, 
when, at seventeen, he sailed for China, amounted to a thousand 
dollars. Russell and Company, a house in Hong Kong allied with 
the Perkinses, accepted him as a clerk. After two years' respon- 
sible work he went home to recruit his health. He was married 
before he was twenty-one and returned to China to settle his 
affairs there and then make a home here, but on his arrival he 
found himself, to his dismay, a member of the firm and could not 
get away for three years. The four months' voyages of those days 
in slow vessels around the Cape of Good Hope made long and 
dull chapters in eager lives. There was danger, but also contin- 
uous weeks of quiet sailing. Happily Mr. Forbes had another 
than the business side to his mind. In calms, or trade-wind sail- 
ing he betook himself to books. His taste for literature was good, 



2 2 8 T^he Saturday Club 

and the Highlander in him loved poetry and songs. Copying his 
favourite verses into his commonplace-book was a great resource. 
It is interesting to trace the strong and varied traits in Mr. 
Forbes's character back to his ancestry. Strathdon in Aberdeen- 
shire, where the Highlands meet the Lowlands near the eastern 
coast, was the Forbes country. They, like the Grahams and 
Gordons, their neighbours, were not a Gaelic clan and, probably, 
like many of the coast families, had a dash of Viking blood, but 
they had intermarried with Highlanders, notably the Camerons, 
the race of Lochiel, and had estates in various parts of north- 
eastern Scotland, but never far from the sea. Thus Highland 
hardiness and valour, romantic imagination and love of nature 
were added to the Lowland industry and logic, while Lowland 
shrewdness and dourness were corrected by Highland generos- 
ity and fire. The remarkable history of Lord President Forbes 
(Duncan of Culloden), faithful, wise, forcible, and humane in the 
troubled times of Scotland in the eighteenth century, ^ repeats 
itself with strange coincidence in that of his remote kinsman here, 
John Forbes of Milton, in the nineteenth. 

Mr. Forbes settled on Milton Hill whence he could see his ships 
come and go, and continued for some time in the China trade, 
taking great interest in the new clipper ships which brought home 
to Boston the first news of their own arrival in China, and were 
always chosen even by English passengers. When, in 1836, his 
brother Robert Bennet had suggested that he should put some 
money into the new railroads, he wrote from China with speed, 
"By no means invest any funds of mine in railway stocks, and 
I advise you to keep clear of them." He always held that it was 
good advice then, and in his Reminiscences proceeds to tell how, 
ten years later, he took hold of railroads, little dreaming of the 
load he was assuming for the coming years. From the time when, 
with a few merchants, he bought the forty miles of primitive 
strap-Iron Michigan Central, till the latter years of his life when 
the great Chicago, Burlington & Quincy system, of which he was 
president, with seven thousand miles of well-laid road connected 

1 See in Edinburgh Review (l8i6, No. li), "The Culloden Papers." 



yohn Murray Forbes 229 

California and tlie great corn country with the markets of the 
world, he never was out of that harness. When English investors 
were justly bitter about the results of their American adventures, 
Mr. Forbes's character and credit with the Barings floated this 
railroad through stormy business crises.^ 

Mr. Forbes kept things in their proper relations, remembered 
that he was a man, and business his horse, — kept it under the 
saddle. Thus mounted he looked at things largely. In the long 
struggle between Northern and Southern civilizations and po- 
litical and ethical codes which culminated in war, he steadily 
played the good citizen. When Webster deserted the cause of 
Freedom in 1850, Mr. Forbes left the Cotton Whigs and always 
strove to present the urgent issues of the time plainly and soberly 
to his friends. North and South. He himself considered the wrong 
and mischief of slavery, but could show to one who did not, in the 
most good-natured and clear way, the practical situation. He 
helped the Free-State men in Kansas, but had to do so very qui- 
etly, because of his ofBcial position in the management of other 
people's property, the first railroad in Missouri. Thus it hap- 
pened when Dr. Howe sent John Brown out to see him and tell 
the story and make the appeal of Kansas, that on the following 
night the pro-slavery Governor of Missouri occupied the same 
bed, which, the night before, had held the man for whose head he 
and the President had oflFered a great reward. 

The words of one of the old partners of Russell and Company 
may well be quoted concerning his relation to business: "He 
never seemed to me a man of acquisitiveness, but very distinctly 
one of constructiveness. His wealth was only an incident. I have 
seen many occasions when much more money might have been 
made by him in some business transaction but for this dominant 
passion for building up things. The good also which he antici- 
pated for business and settlers through opening up the country 
also weighed much with him." 

Of this China merchant and rising railroad man, Mr. Emerson 
used to speak with pleasure on his return from his Boston lec- 

' The interesting and creditable story of Mr. Forbes's railroad services is told by Mr. 
Henry Greenleaf Pearson in An American Railroad-Builder. 



230 The Saturday Club 

tures, some years before the Club gathered, — "That good crea- 
ture John Forbes was there, with his wife, and brother Bennet, 
and they wanted to take me out with them to Milton." Here was 
a "man who could do things," and knew and was part of the great 
doings in the busy world of which Mr. Emerson coveted to know, 
and yet cared for such wares as this "transcendentalist" was fur- 
nishing. 

Mr. James T. Fields, before his own membership, said that when 
he was at the Club as a guest, soon after Mr. Forbes, proposed by 
Emerson, had been chosen a member, the advantage of this fresh 
and strong stimulant introduced into this group of scholars and 
savants was manifest. His sponsor was sure of the success of 
his nominee. He had written, "In common life, whosoever has 
seen a person of powerful character and happy genius will have 
remarked how easily he took all things along with him — the 
persons, the opinions, and the day, and Nature became ancillary 
to man." Mr. Forbes was very modest, and singularly tactful, 
and his influence in making the Club a point of departure for re- 
markable service, and in many ways, to the Country in the dark 
days soon to follow, also in securing comfort, permanence, and 
usefulness to the Club itself, was held in reserve. 

Meantime Mr. Forbes enjoyed it greatly, and always was pres- 
ent, if possible, usually with an interesting guest, or else would 
bring in some young man. For he, always young in spirit, liked to 
have young people about him, test them, too, while giving them 
pleasure. 

The doors were widely open at Naushon, his island, its "good 
greenwood" and billowy sheep-downs stretching for miles be- 
tween the blue Bay and Vineyard Sound. In the large hospitality 
that he exercised, beautifully seconded by his wife and family, the 
widest range of persons shared, men of letters, or of affairs, or of 
science, the statesman, the poet, the artist, the reformer; in short, 
men and women of character who were doing the work of the world 
in varied ways. The idle, the selfish, and the unsound were con- 
spicuously absent. Also the beginners were there, students and 
clerks, boys and girls: children of old friends he remembered with 
a loyalty extending over three generations. None were abashed; 



yohn Murray Forbes 231 

they were drawn out, put on a horse or given an oar, or he talked 
with them quietly, used them on small commissions, saw if they 
had courage and common sense in such chances as occur on land 
or sea, also whether they could observe and report accurately. 
A week under Mr. Forbes's roof was worth more than a year at 
college to many a boy. Every one was put on his mettle by the 
astonishing performance of the chief. Sitting by the fire in the 
room full of family and guests, all talking freely, he concentrated 
his thought and wrote rapidly on matters of great moment for the 
Country or for his railroad; then, suddenly looking up, would call 
for a song, "Bonny Dundee" or "McGregor's Gathering"; then 
for a set at "California All Fours." Weather he ignored, rode 
daily on his line horse to Boston seven miles and back. Secretary 
Stanton, during a visit, exclaimed to Miss Forbes, "What a 
major-general that man would make!" His yachts were not for 
ornament or racing, but for use; often to speed the public busi- 
ness. Some of his most important letters were written in the cabin 
in a gale. For him, as for Caesar, storm and obstacle existed to be 
overcome. 

The lightning gleam and the roaring gale 
Sped his ship to the bay. 

Not only did Agassiz, Holmes, Lowell, Emerson, William Hunt, 
Grant, Sheridan, Stanton, Cleveland, and many distinguished 
Englishmen find refreshment at the island, but wounded officers 
and other convalescents, and tired teachers and householders. 

Mr. Forbes had extraordinary tact in conversation, and in his 
wide correspondence, his letters, all written by his own hand, 
having a great but quiet influence in matters of private business 
or public policy. He wrote or inspired numberless newspaper 
articles and affected wholesomely much legislation, but never let 
his name appear in print. In all his generous, wise, and effective 
public service during the war he managed to keep his name out 
of the newspapers. "So that the thing is done," he would say, "it 
is of no consequence who does it." Besides important services to 
the State and Country, especially in the unpreparedness at the 
outset of the war, he did a great deal to enlighten the public 



232 The Saturday Club 

opinion in England, then dangerously favouring the Confeder- 
acy. He was the valued counsellor of three successive Secretaries 
of the Treasury and of the Secretary of the Navy. Yet he never 
held a political office. 

His daughter has well described his methods thus: — 

"Impatient ... of sloth, incompetency, and above all hypoc- 
risy, I have seen him . . . exhibit an endless patience and long- 
suffering with the foibles most distasteful to him; so that a cousin 
who had had many opportunities of watching him under very 
trying circumstances once exclaimed, 'The most patient mpatient 
man I have ever seen!'^ 

"He never liked to have it known that he wrote editorials, or 
inspired editors with his views, or that he drew up bills for Con- 
gressmen; and he always declined any nomination for office. 'Let 
them feel that I want nothing but the good of the Country, and 
then I shall be trusted; if it is fancied that I work for any per- 
sonal end I shall lose influence.'" 

His daughter said truly: "Perhaps his strongest point was his 
power of 'putting through' work. . . . He never thought the re- 
moval of a poor official, representative, or senator, too great an 
undertaking. No political machine ever made him fear to set 
about such a business. . . ." 

At home or afield Mr. Forbes reminded one of the best of the 
old cavaliers or Highland chiefs in Scott's novels which he loved 
so well, yet to high mind and courage he added a democratic 
spirit. Always remarkably plainly clothed, though personally 
neat, and confident and human in address, he did not disaffect 
working-men in advance, and was loyally served. His face was 
strong, though very plain, with a humorous expression, often 
lurking in its seriousness. His wealth had no ostentation ; the house- 
keeping simple, but refined. He defined intemperance well, as 
"eating or drinking what you did not want because it was there, 
or because you had paid for it." His manifold activities, many 
of them in connection with the Club, will appear in the general 
narrative. 

* From Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, vol. i, edited by Sarah Forbes 
Hughes. 



John Murray Forbes 233 

I find this entry in Mr. Emerson's journal in 1869: — 
"The few stout and sincere persons, whom each one of us 
knows, recommend the Country and the planet to us. 'T is not 
a bad world this, as long as I know that John M. Forbes, or Wil- 
liam H. Forbes,^ and Judge Hoar, and Agassiz, . . . and twenty 
other shining creatures whose faces I see looming through the 
mist, are walking in it. Is it the thirty millions of America, or is 
it your ten or twelve units that encourage your heart from day 
today?" 

E. W. E. 

* Colonel William Hathaway Forbes, who married Mr. Emerson's youoger daughter. 



Chapter VII 
i860 

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable 
of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, be- 
come wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while. 

Emerson 

MR. FIELDS, himself not a member of the Club for four 
years more, but in constant literary and friendly rela- 
tions with members because of the Atlantic Monthly, tells that 
Hawthorne, in England, was constantly demanding longer letters 
from home; and "nothing gave him more pleasure than monthly 
news from 'The Saturday Club,' and detailed accounts of what 
was going forward in literature." In these letters, Hawthorne is 
often inquiring for Whipple, who, he hopes, is coming out with 
Fields. 

Longfellow, on the 1st of March, writes in his journal: "A soft 
rain falling, and all day long I read the Marble Faun. A wonder- 
ful book, but with the old dull pain in it that runs through all 
Hawthorne's writings." 

Motley, having won a name in Europe by his Rise of the Dutch 
Republic, begun about the time of the formation of the Club, 
issued in this year the first two volumes of his United Netherland 
and received the degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford, 
and of LL.D. from Harvard. 

Norton now had launched himself as a man of letters in his 
Notes of Study and Travel in Italy. 

In this year, too, Whipple, the versatile lecturer and essayist 
and bright talker, published his Life of Macaulay. 

In June, Mr. Forbes was chosen Elector-at-large for President. 
It is interesting to read his good estimate of Lincoln at a time when 
New England was greatly troubled at the failure of their idealized 
Seward to win the nomination. He sends to a friend in England 
a copy of the speeches of Douglas and Lincoln in their fight for the 



i860 2 35 

Illinois senatorship, saying: "From such of them as I have read 
I get the idea of a rough, quick-witted man, persistent and deter- 
mined, half educated, but self-reliant and self-taught. . . . These 
speeches . . . show that Lincoln originated in these latter days the 
utterance of the irrepressible conflict — and, what is more, stuck 
to it manfully." After telling that Seward had killed himself by 
associating himself with corrupt politicians, ignoring the com- 
ing conflict, and smoothing things over, he says, " I think on the 
whole the actual nominee will run better, and be quite as likely 
to administer well when in." 

In June, Hawthorne landed with his family, after an absence 
of seven years, happy to be once more at home and free from un- 
congenial business and a degree of public and private sociability 
very trying to his shy and solitary nature. He went to his hill- 
side, "Wayside," home In our quiet village still untouched by 
suburbanism, found the trees he had planted, especially larches 
with their purple blossoms, large enough to screen the path 
from the first corner of his land to the house, and forthwith 
began to build at the top of the house, a tower of refuge from 
the world. He could sit, irresponsive, in his chair on the trap- 
door aff'ording the only access. 

Still, he was Interested and curious about the Club which had 
chosen him a member. He was most cordially received. There, 
as everywhere, Hawthorne was mainly a listener, though he would 
make shy remarks to his next neighbour. Mr. Norton thought 
that he always wanted to put himself under Lowell's or Emer- 
son's protection. 

The meetings were pleasant, and the company broke up re- 
luctantly, but there was then no late train to Concord. Judge 
Hoar solved the difficulty pleasantly by having his man, or, 
quite often, his son Sam, then a boy, — later to be our associate, 
— bring his carryall and big black horse down to Waltham, to 
which a later train ran. Thus the three townsmen, so dlff"erent, 
yet so interesting one to another, had a pleasant ten-mile drive on 
the cool country road, moonlit or starlit, after the hours at the 
gay banquet In Parker's hot room. But for this, Hawthorne and 
the Judge would have seldom met, unless they sat together at 



236 The Saturday Club 

the Club, and there Hawthorne was mainly a handsome picture 
with living eyes. Emerson, too, though his chance for acquaint- 
ance was better, probably met his recluse neighbour hardly half 
a dozen times in Concord after the formation of the Club. Fortu- 
nately the Club gathering always put the Judge in his most genial 
mood. He remembered, too, his position as host, and so, even in 
war time which soon followed, softened his asperity toward this 
harmless Democrat. Thus the conditions for his townsmen to 
get somewhat acquainted with their shy and secluded neighbour 
were the best. Escape for him was impossible, and the twilight or 
darkness made it easier for him to talk, especially after a meeting 
full of such various suggestion and wit. 

In Longfellow's September diary is written: "29th. Breakfast 
with Fields, with Bryant, Holmes, and others. Could not per- 
suade Bryant to dine with the Club" — no reason assigned for 
this reluctance, but evidently it was Bryant's loss, for Long- 
fellow adds: "We had Richard Dana just returned from a voyage 
around the world with very pleasant talk about China and Japan, 
amusing and instructing us a good deal." Dana had broken down 
suddenly in health the year before from overwork and confine- 
ment, and was forced to take his doctor's prescription of a voyage 
around the world, not unpalatable to him. On the fifth day from 
his sailing from San Francisco, rejoicing in voyaging on the Pa- 
cific once more, the ship took fire, and burned up rapidly. Happily 
an English ship, bound for Australia, was close at hand, and all 
were saved, the friendly English captain agreeing at once to land 
the shipwrecked company at the Sandwich Islands, whence it 
was necessary to return to San Francisco and sail again for Hong 
Kong. Mr. Adams gives, in the biography, Dana's highly inter- 
esting account, written day by day, of the experiences in China, 
Japan, and India. Among these is the entertaining story of the 
dinner-party which Dana enjoyed at the house of a Chinese Man- 
darin. When Mr. Emerson came home from that meeting of the 
Club, I remember the pleasure and amusement with which he re- 
peated Dana's story of that occasion, much more vividly told than 
in his journal. 

President Eliot says that Dana helped greatly in promoting 



i860 2 37 

general conversation in the Club, a matter in which there is a 
sad falling-off in the last generation. He was very strong on in- 
ternational law, a branch which the oncoming war was soon to 
make of great importance. Dana told Eliot, on his return from 
his second voyage in both of the great oceans, at the age of 
forty-five, that he was troubled to find that the Sandwich Islands 
had been ruined morally and physically by Captain Cook's dis- 
covery and the coming of his successors. 

The summer had brought the momentary issues of the Republi- 
can Convention before the people, though few could believe that 
secession of the South from the Union was involved. Yet the rule 
of the slave-holders with constant effort for the extension of their 
institution evidently had to be resisted before conditions became 
worse. 

The nomination of Lincoln was a surprise and disappointment 
to New England Republicans who knew little of him. 

There is no record of any adoption of Rules by the Club before 
1875, of which a copy exists. These were superseded by By-laws in 
1886. 



CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

In the troubled year leading on to the great war, Norton was the 
only man Invited to join the Club. To us it may seem strange 
that his friends and neighbours in Cambridge, literary and scien- 
tific, had not chosen him before, but he was nearly nine years 
younger than Lowell, the youngest member, and went to Europe 
the year that the Club gathered, up to that time having been 
regarded as a business man. He came home when the storm-cloud 
preceding the coming struggle was thickening. That year the 
Atlantic was born. Lowell knew Norton's quality, and how first 
the spell of India, then of Greece and Italy had worked upon him, 
and gladly took his contribution to the first number of the maga- 
zine, — his recognition as a rising star. 

Norton had good friends in college among the attractive 
young Southerners and had visited them in their homes and re- 
ceived them at Newport, but he, with clear eyes, saw the great 
coming issue In the country. The guns of Sumter shook up the 
hot, chaotic mass of discordant opinion. Public sentiment crys- 
tallized. The air cleared and was breatheable once more. Men 
showed their colours. Norton had not been an agitator, and war in 
advance would have seemed an unspeakable calamity, but, like 
his fathers, he was born to stand for Higher Law. Delicate in 
health, he could not have served a month in the field, but he 
served in every way that he could. In his two years in Europe 
he had regained fair health; he had learned much. His outward 
and his inward eyes were opened to natural beauty and the spir- 
itual beauty of which that was the symbol. Ruskin's books had 
stirred him already when by chance he met the man on the Lake 
of Geneva, and their friendship increased through the years. Rus- 
kin even then did him some service; Italy did more. Yet he did 
not wish to stay there; first and last he was an American. He 
knew that his countrymen and women needed all the elevating 
influences that he joyed to feel working on him, and were already 
awakening to them. Now he had turned his back on mercantile 



Charles Eliot Norton 239 

business to become a man of letters. It was not conceit. He nat- 
urally went home to work, as one scholar more, in a community 
that needed such. He wished to do his part. He had already 
produced his Notes of Study and Travel in Italy^ an attractive 
book to-day, showing history-in-the-making as well as the study 
of the Past, and, as always with him, the ethical goes hand in 
hand with the aesthetic. But the war, he held, brought duties 
as commanding to him who stayed at home as to him who stood 
in the battle front. In the depression which followed the morti- 
fying rout of the Union army at Bull Run, Norton wrote in the 
Atlantic Monthly on "The Advantages of Defeat," to make North- 
ern people rightly estimate the greatness of the problem, and feel- 
ing that it must be dealt with wisely, steadily, and bravely, if the 
Country and the cause of Free Institutions were to be saved. 
Soldiers' Aid Societies sprang up in every town, and Mr. Norton 
gave his personal work at Cambridge; also to help that admir- 
able agency, the Sanitary Commission. He was one of those who 
strengthened the hands of our noble War Governor, assuring him 
of the joy of all good citizens in his service in having " kept Mas- 
sachusetts firmly to her own ideals, and himself represented all 
that was best in her spirit and aims." 

After the Peninsular Campaign, when the war began to drag, 
in August, 1862, that Indefatigable patriot, John Murray Forbes, 
saw how it would help the vigorous prosecution of the war to col- 
lect clippings from all sources to encourage the people and the 
soldiers, and spread doctrines of sound politics, honest finance, 
efficient recruiting, the dealing with "contrabands," refugees, 
and spies, and send broadsides made up of these clippings all over 
the land. Mr. Norton took charge of this work with admirable 
helpers, and these broadsides of the New England Loyal Publica- 
tion Society were sent out once a week. Country editors gladly 
availed themselves of them, and it Is thought that they reached 
one million readers. A few years later, Mr. Norton was an active 
member of the "Committee of Fifty" alumni who planned and 
carried out the building of the Hall on the Delta in memory of 
the Harvard men who gave their lives for their Country. 

In May, 1862, Mr. Norton was happily married to Miss Susan 



240 The Saturday Club 

Sedgwick. A lady beautiful and gracious, she made perfect that 
home, already of unusual charm and refining influence in Cam- 
bridge. Every evening the doors of that house stood open with 
widest hospitality to all. Madam Norton, of the Eliot family, 
a queen in kindly dignity, erect in her chair, welcomed young or 
old, bashful or brilliant, and her son, his wife, and his remarkable 
sisters, made every guest at home and brought the company to- 
gether. 

Dante Rossetti, who had been in America, wrote — a divination 
from its name of what the Norton home was — "Your 'Shady 
Hill' is a tempting address, where one would wish to be. It re- 
minds one somehow of the PilgrirrC s Progress where the pleasant 
names of Heavenly places really make you feel as if you could get 
there if the journey could be made in that very way — the pit- 
falls plain to the eye, and all the wicked people with wicked names. 
I find no shady hill or vale, though, in these places and pursuits 
which I have to do with." 

Henry James, Jr., speaking of the ripened relations which his 
family had with the Nortons after moving to Cambridge, in 1865, 
tells of "The happy fashion in which the University circle con- 
sciously accepted, for its better satisfaction, or, in other words, 
just from a sense of what was, within its range, in the highest de- 
gree interesting, the social predominance of Shady Hill and the 
master there, and the ladies of the master's family. . . . That in- 
stitution and its administrators, however, became at once, under 
whatever recall of them, a picture of great inclusions and impli- 
cations; so true is it . . . that a strong character, reenforced by a 
great culture, a culture great in the given conditions, obeys an in- 
evitable law in simply standing out. Charles Eliot Norton stood 
out, in the air of the place and time — which, for that matter, 
I think, changed much as he changed, and could n't change much 
beyond his own range of experiment — with a greater salience, 
granting his background, I should say, than I have ever known 
a human figure stand out with from any: an effect involved, of 
course, in the nature of the background as well as in that of the 
figure. He profited, at any rate, to a degree that was a lesson in 
all the civilities, by the fact that he represented an amplier and 



Charles Eliot Norton 241 

easier, above all a more curious, play of the civil relation than was 
to be detected anywhere about, and a play by which that relation 
had the charming art of becoming extraordinarily multifold and 
various without appearing to lose the note of rarity. ... In the 
achieved and preserved terms of intercourse it was that the curi- 
osity, as I have called it, of Shady Hill was justified — so did its 
action prove largely humanizing. This was all the witchcraft it 
had used — that of manners, understood with all the extensions 
at once, and all the particularizations to which it is the privilege 
of the highest conception of manners to lend itself. What it all 
came back to naturally, was the fact that, on so happy a ground, 
the application of such an ideal and such a genius could find 
agents expressive and proportionate, and the least that could be 
said of the ladies of the house was that they had In perfection the 
Imagination of their opportunity." 

In spite of living with open door and in wide social relations, 
Norton was always a worker, remembering that Horce pereunt et 
imputantur, — but to better purpose than In the counting-room 
or mart. First, it pleased him to edit the two volumes of the trans- 
lation of the Gospels which his father was finishing when death 
overtook him; also the son gathered the miscellaneous essays of 
his father, and printed a little volume of his hymns and poems. 
Born Into easy circumstances himself, he thought about the hard 
lot of the helpless poor, and early wrote in the North American 
Review on improved dwellings and schools for them, having per- 
sonally Investigated the shocking condition of Boston tenement 
houses, into which the immigrants were crowding, almost past 
belief now. His article was illustrated by plans of model tenements 
in England. He urged good people to look Into the condition of 
their poor neighbours; recommended the formation of a board of 
health and also sanitary legislation. In Cambridge, young Norton 
worked for the establishment of evening schools, and himself 
taught the newly arrived Irish settlers. 

In some autobiographical notes, Mr. Norton wrote: "During 
my years in the counting-house, a casual acquaintance with Frank 
Parkman developed Into a friendship which lasted through life. 
He was then printing in the Knickerbocker Magazine, If I remember 



2 42 l^he Saturday Club 

rightly, his first book, The Oregon Trail, and when it was to be pub- 
lished as a volume he asked me to revise the numbers, and many an 
evening when there was not other work to be done was spent by 
me and him in the solitary counting-room in going over his work." 

Once a week on Wednesday evenings of 1865-66, Lowell and 
Norton came to Longfellow's, at his request, to hear him read his 
renderings of Dante into English verse as literal as might be, and 
better them if they could. They knew their friend's sincerity, 
sweetness, and modesty, and so well that they obeyed the rule 
given by Ecclesiasticus, "And be not faint-hearted when thou 
sittest in judgment." So all went well and the work was helped. 
"They were delightful evenings," said Mr. Norton, "the spirits 
of poetry, of learning, of friendship were with us." 

His own love of Dante and insight into the deep meaning of the 
great poem were quickened by these studies of the friends, and 
the demonstration by Longfellow's magnificent attempt of the 
difficulty of rightly rendering a subtile line of a poem In a Latin 
tongue by a line of a language largely Teutonic — especially its 
poetic words — made him feel that he must translate the Divina 
Comrnedia into faithful and poetic prose. This he did later with 
best success. He had already made charming translation of La 
Vita Nuova. 

Now came a long break In Norton's attendance at the Club. In 
the summer of 1868, he went to Europe, taking with him his wife 
and little children, his venerable mother and his two sisters. The 
family remained abroad five years, at first in Italy, later in Ger- 
many and England. During that time Norton was in constant 
relation with Ruskin, by letters when they were not together. 

The first three years were most happy. The family life in far 
cities in pleasant lands alive with associations; freedom from out- 
side duties, so exacting at home; the sense of the rapid growth of 
his power to see beauty; the increasing love and reverence for 
Dante; the study of the minds and aspirations of mediaeval men 
through their works, and in the original records, which he dili- 
gently studied; the many profitable acquaintances — all these 
made the days pleasant. 

But this was to change. In the autumn of 1871, Mr. Norton 



Charles Eliot Norton 243 

took his family to Dresden to spend the winter. There the great 
sorrow of his life fell on him in the death of his wife, a woman 
beautiful in all ways. She left to him six little children, and love 
and care for these were to help through the first darkness of the 
following years. Yet tenderness to his family and friends seemed 
to be but strengthened; and those less near, who visited Mr. Nor- 
ton and his family in their lodgings in England, found in that 
temporary home from which a light had gone out, and where a 
gracious presence was missing, the essence of home still there — 
courage and kindness made more real by the testing they had 
undergone; the cheerful lending of attention and sympathy to 
others, and duties done, and labours bravely pursued. 

Ruskin, older, more restless and sadder, was there; for that 
which was unbeautiful and dark in life now occupied this sensi- 
tive soul more than art. These things wrought havoc with his 
mind and conscience, yet he would not cease from manifold studies 
and works. More than once his brain and body gave way in the 
succeeding years, yet his friend soothed, counselled, pleaded, and 
was his helper, as far as he could be helped, to the end; but that 
did not come for years. 

Norton found a friend in William Morris, the dreamer turned 
brave worker, but was especially drawn to Burne-Jones by his 
earnest and thoughtful life and work. His old friend Stillman, of 
versatile mind and gifts, brave friend of Greece and Crete in their 
troubles, was there. But, for the first time, Mr. Norton met Car- 
lyle, now sad with a bereavement like his own and broken with 
age and palsy. Carlyle visited him when he was convalescent 
from pneumonia, and wrote of "Norton, a man I like more and 
more." Again, "He Is a fine. Intelligent and affectionate crea- 
ture with whom I have always had a pleasant, soothing, and in- 
teresting dialogue when we met." 

When the Nortons sailed for home in May, 1873, Carlyle wrote: 
"I was really sorry to part with Norton. . . . He had been, 
through the winter, the most human of all the company I, from 
time to time, had. A pious, cultivated, intelligent, much suffer- 
ing man. He has been five years absent from America and is now 
to return one, instead of two, as he left." 



2 44 The Saturday Club 

In 1873, in latter May, the doors of the ideal home at Shady 
Hill were once more opened to sunlight and to friends. This must 
have lightened the shadow left by his loss on Mr. Norton's mind. 
Also an event occurred which proved helpful to him in the way 
natural to him — helping others. The College close by was 
changed, for there was a new President. That institution had 
offered to youth a "liberal education" for two hundred and thirty- 
eight years, and had created Bachelors and Masters of Arts, but 
the Fine Arts had had no recognition except by allusion. Mr. 
Norton was invited to give some lectures, and in 1875 ^^^ made 
Professor of the Fine Arts. Some thirty-four students attended: 
when he resigned in 1897, the attendance had increased thirteen- 
fold. He ploughed a fallow ground and sowed it for a crop sorely 
needed. Some of the seed fell on stony ground, but the harvest 
was good, and many were fed, and saved good seed-corn from which 
harvests elsewhere in the land were to spring. The studies of the 
old-time compulsory curriculum used to be called "The Humani- 
ties," and with reason. Now the humanities were to be taught to 
greater numbers than by Frisbie, Everett, Ticknor, Longfellow, 
Felton, and Lowell, and with a freer hand; and this was the more 
important as the opening sciences made their claim good, and popu- 
lar feeling for the time was unfavourable to the classics. 

When this class had so many applicants that the lecture had to 
be given in Sanders Theatre, Mr. Norton entered, looked on the 
throng of students and began, — " This is a sad sight.''^ He knew 
how large a fraction were idle boys who chose what they thought 
would be an easy course. As his friend Professor Charles H. 
Moore said: "Norton drew aside a curtain and showed to thought- 
less or immature boys a glimpse of the vast hall of being in which 
they or their ancestors had constructed a little hut and yard, shut- 
ting out its celestial dimensions. Norton knocked a breach in 
these walls, and let them see Nature and what her beauties sym- 
bolized"; also the great interpreters of these as living teachers, and 
the relations of Poetry, History, Religion, Human Life and Con- 
duct to Art. 

Norton opened for these crude young scholars side doors show- 
ing vistas into the remote but shining Past, the deep questionings, 



Charles Eliot Norton 245 



the songs, the oracles, and the wisdom that men had won, one 
thousand or two thousand years before the scream of the Ameri- 
can eagle had been heard. This gave his hearers a better per- 
spective, which might teach them modesty. He showed how far 
from dead the great are, and that they are wise for to-day, since 
humanity is the same, and the great laws are, in Antigone's words, 
"Not of now or yesterday, but always were." 

The teaching was ethical. He showed the sons of poor men mines 
of spiritual treasure; the sons of rich men the responsibility of 
having; that wealth demanded helpful use, and leisure unselfish 
work; that to be a mere dilettante and idle collector was demoral- 
izing. One must be a worker in some sort. All beauty is allied. 
"Behaviour is a fine art," he said. Death is normal; what is to 
be feared is death in life — the sin against the Holy Spirit. 

In more than he knew, the leaven that he put into the lump 
worked. 

Certain criticisms on the trend of American activity and ex- 
pression, purposely made strong to command the attention of 
the young generation, and recalling Ruskin's sweeping dicta^ nat- 
urally excited dissent. These were his judgments, perhaps too 
severe, and fallible; the steady lesson to the class was the high 
plane of thought and action native to the teacher. 

And many young hearers carried away little else, yet that was 
worth coming to college for. A year before Mr. Norton died, I 
heard in one day the grateful witness of three different graduates, 
then in full tide of useful life, to their debt to those lectures in 
opening their eyes to the beauty and the high possibilities of life. 
Another, a lawyer, writing from the activities of State Street, 
just after Mr. Norton's death, speaks of his instruction as the 
"solid acquisition" he carried from college, without which he 
should feel himself a "poorer man." 

But Mr. Norton's relation with the University was not only 
as a teacher. It was administrative and advisory, and he made It 
human; for he was one of the Faculty, an Overseer, and for a time 
President of the Alumni Association. Coming back from Europe, 
where he had been in relation with the scholars, and at the foun- 
tains of Old World culture, he was free from that provincialism 



246 The Saturday Club 

which had so shocked Agasslz on coming to Cambridge, and which 
Eliot had begun to shake. 

In spite of Mr. Norton's sweetness of manners and habitual 
courtesy, he would, at what seemed the telling moment, draw 
the weapon of plain speech and strike, as the occasion demanded, 
a coup-de-grace ^ a cut of kindness, necessary to cleave through the 
thick skin of inconsiderateness, or shear away the blinder of de- 
ception. An instance of this trait should be recorded. Once on an 
ocean steamer, on which Mr. Norton was travelling, a young man 
came, morning by morning, to breakfast, sour and silent. One 
day, Mr. Norton made occasion to walk with him on deck and 
said: "I am going to take the liberty of making a personal remark 
and suggestion to you. It is this: — that you make an effort to 
come into the breakfast room in the morning with a cheerful ex- 
pression on your face. You do not know what a difference such 
things make. Your manner, thus far, has cast a shade on the 
company about you, and made the meal and day begin less cheer- 
fully than it should. If you would change this, you would see a 
surprising difference. I hope you mean to be married. You do not 
know what a difference such a practice will make to your wife and 
in your home." The young man took it well, made some effort dur- 
ing the rest of the voyage, and, years afterwards, wrote his thanks 
to Mr. Norton for having done him and his a service great and 
lasting. 

I recall a Chinese poem which runs thus: — 

"Happy is the wise man who behind the mountains 
Delights in the noise of cymbals: 
Alone on his couch and awake, he exclaims, — 
'Never, I swear it, shall the vulgar know the sources 
Of the happiness which I enjoy.'" 

Behind the hills of Franklin County, Norton had, about 1867, 
established, in the independent little village of Ashfield, not a 
summer cottage, but another home. Unlike the Chinese poet, he 
went there feeling that he must take part in its lot, be a neigh- 
bour, share all he knew with them, instead of using them and 
calling them "Natives." Soon after, George William Curtis, 
visiting his friend, decided to make a home there, in the like spirit. 



Charles Eliot Norton 247 

for part of the year. Their good feeling and wishes were met by the 
people of the town. 

Both kept a warm relation to Ashfield for the rest of their lives. 
They lent themselves to its service in all ways, and once a year 
at a village banquet drew admirable and eminent guests thither 
to meet the Ashfield people. 

Norton was much misapprehended, ridiculed even, in his day; 
not by those who really knew him. Certain mannerisms, some 
strong statements taken alone or misquoted; standards of taste 
or public duty differing from their own; ignorance of his kindness, 
his faithful work, and earnest concern for the right, led some 
persons variously to suppose him a dilettante, a carper, out of 
sympathy with his age and country, irreligious and a pessimist. 
It is true he was impatient of optimism, being too sensitive to the 
evils of his day and the dangers already looming even over Amer- 
ica, results of low standards in politics, trade, culture, conduct, to 
be content in waiting for things to work out right in secular time. 
He felt the duty to warn as well as to work. 

Mr. Charles Howard Walker says of his revered teacher, "His 
pessimism, so-called, was but a patient sadness at the spectacle of 
the achievements of ignorance, and his faith in the dissipation of 
that ignorance grew with his years — and he, if any man, did his 
utmost to encourage appreciation of the best." No passive railer, 
but a scholar who had read the lesson of history and knew the 
wisdom, never outgrown, of the great spirits of the Past, he, in his 
day, worked for the right with tongue and pen — and showed its 
beauty. Thus he was, from first to last, an eminently good citizen 
of Cambridge and of the world. 

Surely here was a "pessimist" of a new and useful kind, who 
could find in his insecurity as to new opportunities after death this 
moral: "When men learn that the mystery of the universe and of 
their own existence Is Insoluble, that this life is all, they will 
perhaps find that with this limitation has come a new sense of the 
value of life to the individual, and his infinite unimportance to 
the universe. He will learn that he can be a help or a harm to his 
fellows, and that Is enough." 

Norton, though, like Montaigne, saying of the Future, ^''Que 



248 "The Saturday Club 

sais jeV was not a man without God in the world. Catholic in the 
best sense of the word, he respected honest and devout believers. 
Speaking in his pious ancestor's church in Hingham, at its two 
hundredth anniversary, he said: — 

"A continuous spiritual life runs through the centuries. . . . 
The path of duty . . . trodden by the common men and women of 
every period, is the thread of light running unbroken through the 
past up to the present hour. Creeds change, temptations differ, old 
landmarks are left behind, new perils confront us; but always the 
needle points to the North Star, and always are some common 
men and women following its guidance." 

E. W. E. 



Chapter VIII 
1861 

There is a sound of thunder afar. 

Storm in the South that darkens the day. 
Storm of battle and thunder of war. 
Well if it do not roll our way. 
Form! form! Riflemen form! 
Ready, be ready to meet the storm! 
Riflemen, riflemen, riflemen, form! 

Tennyson 

THE New Year opened with hardly credible signs of imminent 
war. Five days before Christmas, hot-headed South Caro- 
lina had passed an ordinance of secession from the United States, 
and the fire was spreading to her neighbour States. Instead of a 
blast of indignation, Dr. Holmes wrote this affectionate appeal, 
from which I select four verses: — 

BROTHER JONATHAN'S LAMENT FOR SISTER CAROLINE 

She has gone, — she has left us in passion and pride, — 
Our stormy-browed sister, so long at our side! 
She has torn her own star from our firmament's glow, 
And turned on her brother the face of a foe! 

Oh, Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun, 
We can never forget that our hearts have been one, — 
Our foreheads both sprinkled in Liberty's name, 
From the fountain of blood with the finger of flame! 



Oh, Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun, 
There are battles with Fate that can never be won! 
The star-flowering banner must never be furled, 
For its blossoms of light are the hope of the world! 

Go, then, our rash sister! afar and aloof, 

Run wild in the sunshine away from our roof; 

But when your heart aches and your feet have grown sore, 

Remember the pathway that leads to our door! 



2 so The Saturday Club 

Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana fell away from 
their allegiance in January and, on the first day of February, Texas. 
Yet the North could not yet believe what was coming; that the 
South, having fairly lost the game at the November election, 
"would n't play" any longer. Conservative Boston Whigs were 
at last tired of being used, and despised. Almost all of the Club 
members were strong anti-slavery men, had voted for Lincoln, and 
were ready as good citizens to sustain him. 

John A. Andrew, born in Maine, not of Boston blue blood, a 
brave and courageous lawyer, had been chosen Governor by the 
largest popular vote ever cast for a candidate up to that time. 
He had been in the South in the autumn before as valiant counsel 
for one of John Brown's men, and had decided that now, as com- 
mander of the Massachusetts Militia, it was his clear duty. In 
some measure, to prepare for war. He, through the Adjutant- 
General's office, quietly had captains Instructed to weed their 
companies of such men as were unwilling or unfit to serve. He 
also had four thousand blue caped overcoats got ready, a meas- 
ure considered foolish extravagance at the time. In April, they 
proved Invaluable to our soldiers. 

Mr. Forbes saw the vigour and wisdom of the Governor, and, 
as will presently be told, became his able and useful helper, but 
meantime had duties at Washington, for he had been chosen a 
delegate to a "Peace Congress." Having served as Presidential 
Elector-at-large, he saw there a danger that must be provided 
against. On a day In February it was the duty of Vice-President 
Breckinridge, an open disunionist, as President of the Senate, to 
march at the head of that body to the Chamber of Representatives 
carrying the electoral votes. Until these had been opened and 
counted, and the result declared, Lincoln could not become Presi- 
dent. Washington was full of traitors with whom Breckinridge 
was In full sympathy. Old General Scott had hardly one thousand 
men in the District forts, etc. Should a body of disunlonists seize 
and destroy those ballots, the Southern party In Congress, now 
desperate, might claim that Buchanan and his Cabinet still had 
the power. Mr. Forbes quietly arranged with Captain (later. 
General) Franklin, who had charge of the Capitol extension, to be 



i86i 251 

in the building early that morning with a force of workmen, to 
make sure that no body of conspirators were lurking about. 
Nothing happened — but the danger was real and of great mo- 
ment. 

It soon appeared to the Massachusetts delegation to the Peace 
Congress that concessions to the slave power were expected, sacri- 
ficing all that had been gained in years of struggle, and this would 
only lead to more unreasonable demands; so the discussions only 
served the valuable purpose of gaining time before the inevitable 
war, and considering what could be saved of the Government's 
points of vantage and property. Mr. William H. Aspinwall, of 
New York, told Mr. Forbes that General Scott was very anxious, 
for he knew that Major Anderson was not only short of ammuni- 
tion, but was mainly dependent for his food-supply on the Charles- 
ton market. Aspinwall and Forbes made plans to send a vessel 
with adequate relief in powder and food, advancing the money 
at their own risk. The vessel was to be ostensibly consigned to 
Charleston merchants, and defended by schooners In tow on each 
side loaded with hemp. Lieutenant Gustavus B. Fox, afterwards 
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, was willing to go in charge. The 
old General was delighted, but it was deemed necessary to take 
the Navy Department into counsel, of which Toucey, of doubtful 
loyalty, was Secretary. This made hopeless publicity and delay, 
so the carefully and generously made plan fell through. 

The flag was fired upon April 12, and the fort surrendered after 
thirty-six hours' bombardment. The air cleared, and a degree of 
public unanimity crystallized which would have seemed impos- 
sible in the months before. It was expressed by a blossoming of 
city and village in flags. Our member Horatio Woodman, lifted 
out of himself by this cheering sight, wrote these fine lines : — 

THE FLAG 

Why flashed that flag on Monday morn 

Across the startled sky? 
Why leapt the blood to every cheek, 

The tears to every eye? 
The hero in our four months' woe, 

The symbol of our might. 



252 The Saturday Club 

Together sunk for one brief hour, 
To rise forever bright. 

The mind of Cromwell claimed his own, 

The blood of Naseby streamed 
Through hearts unconscious of the fire 

Till that torn banner gleamed. 
The seeds of Milton's lofty thoughts, 

All hopeless of the spring, 
Broke forth in joy, as through them glowed 

The life great poets sing. 

Old Greece was young, and Homer true, 

And Dante's burning page 
Flamed in the red along our flag. 

And kindled holy rage. 
God's Gospel cheered the sacred cause, 

In stern, prophetic strain. 
Which makes His Right our covenant, 

His Psalms our deep refrain. 

Oh, sad for him whose light went out 

Before this glory came, 
Who could not live to feel his kin 

To every noble name; 
And sadder still to miss the joy 

That twenty millions know, 
In Human Nature's Holiday, 

From all that makes life low. 

Before midnight on Monday, the day of Sumter's fall, the 
Governor had sent his summons to a part of the militia, and on 
Tuesday had the Sixth and Eighth Massachusetts Regiments, 
armed, uniformed, and provided with the new overcoats, in Bos- 
ton ready to start for Washington. 

The transportation must be provided. Mr. Samuel M. Felton 
(President of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad, 
and brother of our member, the President of Harvard), whose 
wise management had secured the safe passage of Lincoln to 
Washington in spite of plots to assassinate him on the way, had 
shown Mr. Forbes the danger of the burning of the railroad bridges 
between Baltimore and Washington. This now happened, but 
Mr. Forbes, used to railroads and ships, promptly engaged one 



i86i 253 

steamer in Boston, another at Fall River by telegraph, had them 
provisioned, and sent his best clipper-ship captain to the latter; 
got them both off with their regiments on the 17th of April, 
saying, "Massachusetts must be first on the ground." ^ 

Mr. Forbes, with no public office or commission, except letters 
and orders from the Governor, and well backed by patriotic mer- 
chants and bankers, helped the Governor, the State, the Country, 
with experience, energy, common sense, influence, and money. 
Some one called him the "Secretary of the Navy for Massachu- 
setts," but he was far more. He worked through others, well 
chosen, and kept his name out of the newspapers. 

Charles Francis Adams was sent to England in May, as Minis- 
ter from the United States, there to remain for seven years of 
great import and trial, serving his Country with wisdom and 
great firmness. He was chosen a member of the Club after his 
return. 

Judge Hoar, at the request of the Governor, went to Wash- 
ington to perform the important service of acting as friend and 
adviser of the Massachusetts soldiers, and mediator between them 
and the Government in that period of trial and unpreparedness. 
It is needless to say that he did this voluntary service well. 

Dr. Howe also gladly consented to go to investigate the health 
of our men, report on the sanitary conditions and urge on the 
Government to do promptly what was necessary. He wrote: 
"There is more need of a health officer than a chaplain; and the 
United States knows no such officer. . . . Soap! soap! soap! I 
cry, but none heed. . . . Washerwomen are needed more than 
nurses." 

These efficient and influential envoys did what they could at 
the time when the need of a Sanitary Commission was not yet 
realized. 

Professor Peirce was at this time Consulting Astronomer to 

1 Mr. Forbes tells, in his Reminiscences, that when the second of these vessels, the State 
of Maine, commanded by the admirable Captain Eldridge, arrived promptly at Fortress 
Monroe, Colonel Dimmock, a fine old West Point officer, was almost moved to tears of joy 
on seeing the reenforcements pour in upon his ill-defended post, the most strategic post 
upon our whole coast commanding, as it did, the entrance to Baltimore, Washington, and 
Richmond. 



2 54 The Saturday Club 

the Coast Survey, the work of which, before and during the war, 
under Bache, was of the greatest importance. The coast-line from 
Chesapeake Bay to the Rio Grande was enemy's country, to be 
immediately blockaded, with landing expeditions soon to follow, 
involving accurate knowledge of tides, currents, shoals, harbours, 
and forts. The Nautical Almanac and Ephemeris (as has been 
mentioned in the sketch of Peirce), a remarkable and important 
work, was due to his brother-in-law, Captain Davis (later, Ad- 
miral) and himself. In spite of his having been a pro-slavery 
Democrat with close friendship with many Southerners, after the 
fall of Sumter Professor Peirce was a strong Union man. 

Motley arrived in Boston in early June, bringing "very bril- 
liant accounts of our English relations," which, however, later 
events in the year did not confirm. The blockade was not yet 
effective and, as yet, no cotton famine disturbed the British manu- 
facturers. 

For a successful blockade, and for transportation, It immedi- 
ately appeared that the Navy must be supplemented by a large 
force of vessels and men. Mr. Dana drew up carefully a "Bill for 
a Volunteer Navy," for which Mr. Forbes, in constant relation 
with the admirable Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Fox, made 
the rough draft. Mr. Adams wrote of its importance to check 
privateering by the Confederacy. 

As will be seen in the sketch of Dr. Asa Gray, not yet one of 
our members, that alert and kindly man served, although fifty 
years old, In the company enlisted hastily to guard the arsenal at 
Cambridge. 

Elliot Cabot, the scholar, youngest member of the Club, was 
forty years old. He did not consider himself likely to be useful 
in the field, but joined the excellent Boston Drill Club on the 
chance of later emergencies. 

Ward, as representative of the Baring firm of English bankers, 
was important In giving them Information of the true situation 
here, and the attitude and resolve of our people. 

The scholars, writers, poets of the Club loyally did their various 
parts with pen, or such personal service as they could do for the 
soldiers, or in stimulating public opinion. In November, Motley 



i86i 255 

was appointed Minister to Austria, a position which he held for 
six years. 

Longfellow took the war very hard. On Sunday, April 28, he 
writes: "I am glad the pulpit did not thunder a war-sermon to- 
day. A 'truce of God' once a week is pleasant. At present the 
North is warlike enough, and does not need arousing." But, eleven, 
days later, we find in the journal the poet swept into the military 
current: "9th. A delightful morning. ... In the afternoon went 
with Felton to the Arsenal to see the students drill — a dress 
parade. As the Major did not arrive, Felton and I were requested 
to review them! Which we did, by marching up and down, in 
front and rear." 

He bears, soon after, this witness to Agassiz's loyalty to the 
land of his adoption: "July 1st. Agassiz comes to dinner. He has 
a new offer from the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, to be the head of 
it, if he will only pass three months there yearly; but he declines." 

That summer brought upon Longfellow the deep wound and 
sorrow of his life, the death of his wife by an accident with fire. 
He bore this overwhelming grief with courage and silence, but 
the healing came very slowly. 

July brought to the Country the astounding shock of the defeat 
and rout of its untrained militia — most of whom had never 
rammed a ball-cartridge down the smooth-bore of their Spring- 
field muskets — at Bull Run. But now the North had already 
awakened to the fact that this was no six-weeks' war, and Massa- 
chusetts regiments and batteries were being rapidly raised, and 
trained as well as might be, before being hurried to the front where 
General McClellan was doing excellent organizing work. 

Lowell was stirred heart and soul by the war, Its cause, and 
its hoped-for issue. The views expressed through the mouth of 
his young Hosea Biglow on war in general, on the occasion of the 
unrighteous Mexican War, had then had no saving qualifications. 
He had said, — 

"As for war, I call it murder; 
There you hev it plain an' flat; 
I don't hev to go no furder 
Than my Testament fur that." 



256 "The Saturday Club 

Now, Hosea, in middle age began to believe that there were 
righteous wars — this one eminently so; and it became his mis- 
sionary work to show England that it was. 

Two of Lowell's brother's sons and one son of his sister were 
early commissioned In the Army, as well as other youths of his 
kindred less near. The head of Governor Winthrop on the Atlantic 
Monthly was now replaced by the American flag, and its patriotic 
articles and poems stirred the public. In the end of October an- 
other disastrous battle was fought at Ball's Bluff, in which 
Lowell's nephew William Putnam was killed, and young Wendell 
Holmes severely wounded. ^ Early In November, the seizure by 
Captain Wilkes, U.S.N., of the commissioners of the Confederacy 
from an English vessel, and their imprisonment at Fort Warren, 
delighted the North and greatly Irritated England. War seemed 
imminent, but President Lincoln decided that they could not 
rightly be held, and it was averted. This incident gave occasion 
to Lowell, through the mouth of his more mature Hosea Biglow, to 
bring out his admirable "Jonathan to John": — 

"It don't seem hardly right, John, 
When both my hands was full, 
To stump me to a fight, John, — 
Your cousin, too, John Bull! 
Ole Uncle S., sez he, 'I guess 
We know it now,' sez he; 
'The lion's paw is all the law, 
Accordin' to J. B., 
Thet's fit for you an' me.' 



"We own the ocean, too, John, 
You mus'n' take it hard 
If we can't think with you, John, 
It's jest your own back yard. 
Ole Uncle S., sez he, 'I gues* 
Ef thet's his claim,' sez he, 
'The fencin'-stuff will cost enough 
To bust up friend J. B. 
Ez wal ez you and me!' 



' See Dr. Holmes's very human, yet professional, article in the Atlantic of December, 
1862, "My Hunt after the Captain." 



i86i 257 



"We give the critters back, John, 
'Cos Abram thought 't was right; 
It warn't your bullying clack, John, 
Provokin' us to fight. 
Ole Uncle S., sez he, 'I guess 
We've a hard row,' sez he, 
*To hoe jest now; but thet, somehow, 
May happen to J. B. 
Ez wal ez you an' me.'" 



United States Marshal John S. Keyes, of Concord, by official 
orders released the prisoners January 2, 1862. Dr. Holmes re- 
called in later years that "One of the most noted of our early 
guests was Captain (later, Commodore) Charles Wilkes of the San 
Jacinto, who had just taken Mason and Slidell from the Trent, and 
was made a hero of for his blunder." 

Among these memories of the sad or exciting events of the first 
year of war, two others of quite another flavour should be set 
down in our book: — 

Longfellow, on the 23d of February of this year, writes: "At 
the Club old President Quincy was our guest; and was very 
pleasant and wise." He had just entered on his ninetieth year. 

In Mr. Scudder's Lije of Lowell he has, in one of his letters, an 
entertaining picture, from the good old days of the Club, of a single 
combat between a famous British heavy-armed champion and a 
diminutive, but gallant and agile. New Englander. The date is 
September 20, 1861, when Lowell writes: — 

" I dined the other day with Anthony Trollope, a big, red-faced, 
rather underbred Englishman of the bald-with-spectacles type. 
A good, roaring positive fellow who deafened me (sitting on his 
right) till I thought of Dante's Cerberus. He says he goes to 
work on a novel 'just like a shoemaker on a shoe, only taking care 
to make honest stitches.' Gets up at five every day, does all his 
writing before breakfast, and always writes just so many pages a 
day. He and Dr. Holmes were very entertaining. The Autocrat 
started one or two hobbles, and charged, paradox in rest — but it 
was pelting a rhinoceros with seed-pearl: — 

"£)r. You don't know what Madeira is in England. 



2S^ The Saturday Club 

" T. I'm not so sure it's worth knowing. 

"Z)r. Connoisseurship in it with us is a fine art. There are men 
who will tell you a dozen kinds, as Dr. Waagen would know a 
Carlo Dolci from a Guido. 

" T. They might be better employed! 

''''Dr. Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well. 

" T. Ay, but that's begging the whole question. I don't admit 
it's worse doing at all. If they earn their bread by it, it may be 
worse doing [roaring). 

^^ Dr. But you may be assured — 

" T. No, but I may n't be asshored. I wonH be asshored. I 
don't intend to be asshored {roaring louder) ! 

"And so they went it. It was very funny. Trollope would n't 
-give him any chance. Meanwhile, Emerson and I, who sat be- 
tween them, crouched down out of range and had some very good 
talk, the shot hurtling overhead. I had one little passage at 
arms with T. a propos of English peaches. T. ended by roaring 
that England was the only country where such a thing as a peach 
or a grape was known. I appealed to Hawthorne, who sat oppo- 
site. His face mantled and trembled for a moment with some droll 
fancy, as one sees bubbles rise and send off rings in still water 
when a turtle stirs at the bottom, and then he said, 'I asked an 
Englishman once who was praising their peaches to describe to 
me what he meant by a peach, and he described something very 
like a cucumber.' I rather liked Trollope." 

The founding of an institution in this year, great, beneficent, and 
effective, in which members of the Club were interested, and for 
which they gave generously, and some did personal service, must 
not be forgotten. The National Sanitary Commission, an idea 
originating in New York, was zealously taken up in Boston, and 
an organization for Massachusetts made, with J. Huntington 
Wolcott as head. It extended throughout the loyal States. Rev. 
Henry W. Bellows was the head of the general Commission, but 
the practical work was through the head and hands of Frederick 
Law Olmsted (later, one of our associates) and his excellent deputy, 
Frederick N. Knapp, of Plymouth. The Secretary of War named 



i86i 259 

for service on this Board Dr. Samuel G. Howe, Dr. Jeffries Wyman, 
and Professor Wolcott Gibbs, all of them, in time, members of 
the Club. 

This first year of the Civil War proved a touchstone of the 
metal of the citizens. Its threatenings had already influenced the 
membership of the Club; its continuance did so even more. It 
was a sundering sword in each community. The Cause was not 
only an urgent matter for discussion, but for immediate and varied 
action. The elders at home could no more escape from their share 
of speech or work than the boys in the field from military duties. 

In this year four new members were chosen. One was a quiet 
scholar, but of clear sight and firm character; one a patriot of 
widest scope, a reformer, not by speeches, but by great and diffi- 
cult deeds genially done; the third a Unitarian minister of influ- 
ence, a professor at Harvard, and a notable metaphysician; the 
fourth a physician by education, but attracted from the profes- 
sion towards promoting modern public enterprises; brave and 
outspoken also in the cause of Freedom. 



JAMES ELLIOT CABOT 

James Elliot Cabot was born in Boston in 1821. His father, 
Samuel Cabot, was, at the time, the active partner of the firm of 
the Perkins Brothers engaged in trade with the Orient. Mr. Cabot 
married EHza, eldest daughter of Colonel Thomas Handasyd 
Perkins, perhaps the leading citizen, as well as merchant, of Boston 
in his day, and its benefactor as the founder of the Perkins In- 
stitution for^ the Blind, and, with others, of the Massachusetts 
General Hospital and the Athenaeum. 

Elliot entered college well prepared at the age of fifteen. In 
the autobiographic sketch which he wrote at his son's request in 
his later years, from which I shall quote freely, he says that he 
took little interest in his studies, which his instructors conducted 
in a dead-and-alive way. He speaks of Edward Channing's value 
for good English, but lack of needful enthusiasm; "The rest were 
pedants, with the exception of Jones Very, our Greek tutor, a 
man of high and noble character and full of religious enthusiasm, 
but somewhat morbid and unbalanced." 

*'In college," Cabot says, "I was something of a transcenden- 
talist, a great admirer of Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, and had con- 
ceived a contempt for the working-day world. I was without the 
enticement of ambition or the sting of poverty, and, though I had 
a respect for learning and read all sorts of abstruse books, . , . 
rather despised the official standards, without ever being idle or 
dissipated." His special intimates were William Sohier and 
Henry Bryant, eager as sportsman and ornithologist respectively. 
All together they scoured the Fresh Pond and Brick Yard Marshes, 
the first two doing most of the shooting, and Cabot the skinning 
of the specimens, which skins he forwarded to the equally zealous 
brother Sam, then studying medicine in Paris, to exchange for 
French bird skins. 

On graduating he joined Dr. Sam in Switzerland and they saw 
Italy together with interesting adventures such as befel travellers 
in the Apennines in those days, and then went to Paris to study. 



James Elliot Cabot 261 

Elliot followed courses on Natural History at the Jardin des 
Plantes and on Literature at the College de France. But with 
spring came an attractive proposal. Three of his classmates 
wrote urging him to "join them at Heidelberg for a conquest of 
German philosophy in Its application to law, which we were all of 
us expecting to make our profession." 

"My life in Heidelberg was a delightful episode of hard work 
upon German, varied by long walks over the beautiful hills and 
dales, excursions up the Neckar, and pleasant society at the How- 
itts', who were living there. With a view mostly to the lan- 
guage we attended lectures on History and Philosophy of Law." 
Thence the friends proceeded to Berlin. Cabot attended the 
course of Steffens, the leading representative there of Schelling's 
philosophy. He describes It as "a sort of transcendental physical 
geography and geology, an application of Schelling's doctrines to 
natural science." Schelling himself came there during the win- 
ter, it was said, for the purpose of extinguishing Hegel. His course 
was on "The Philosophy of Mythology." 

The winter of 1842-43 Cabot spent at Gottlngen with his Vir- 
ginian crony, Heath, studying Kant, and also taking a course In 
the Physiological Laboratory of Wagner, but always enjoying 
the Lleberkranze of the students, and even learning to fence with 
the "schlager." He always loved the walking excursions, which he 
and his friends took along the Rhine and among the Alps. 

But in later years Mr. Cabot wrote: "As I look back upon my 
residence In Europe, what strikes me is the waste of time and 
energy from having had no settled purpose to keep my head 
steady. I seem to have been always well employed and happy; 
but I had been indulging a disposition to mental sauntering and 
the picking up of scraps, very unfavourable to my education. I 
was, I think, naturally inclined to hover somewhat above the 
solid earth of practical life and thus to miss its most useful les- 
sons." It is interesting to see how. In reviewing each episode of 
his life, Mr. Cabot's humility and his high standards make him 
blame himself frankly for shortcomings, while in his quiet way and 
according to his gifts he did many things well, and, more, was so 
much to those around him. His happiness was his approval. 



2 62 'T'he Saturday Club 

On his return from his three years of study In Europe, Mr. 
Cabot joined his family at Nahant. His great-grandfathers — 
Norman-French In blood — came from the Channel Islands, and 
thereafter the family had been Boston merchants, trading far 
over sea, as had the Perkinses, his mother's family, and so 
Elliot always lived near the shore, Brookline, In winter, being 
the farthest Inland of his homes through life. So he enjoyed, dur- 
ing the summer, the family schooner-rigged boat; when autumn 
came, he entered the Harvard Law School. He received his 
Bachelor's degree in 1845. For a year he was In the office of 
William D. Sohier, and then joined Mr. Francis Edward Parker 
in establishing a law firm. Mr. Cabot modestly writes: "It was 
at his request, and he insisted that my name should be first on 
the sign. As he must have been aware of his great superiority to 
me in business capacity, I can only explain his desire for the 
position by the belief that my name would attract more attention, 
and that my connections would bring us more business than he 
saw his way to elsewhere." But It Is probable that Parker knew 
what a clear head Cabot had, also his power of concentration on 
abstruse subjects. Mr. Cabot goes on: "I think that we were In 
business together for about a year, and that we paid our expenses, 
which were greater in the way of furniture, position, etc., than I 
should have indulged In, from his idea (which I have no doubt 
was well founded) that it was good economy. Parker then — 1847 
— had an offer from R. H. Dana to take a room next him and to 
be In some way connected with him in business. Partly to facili- 
tate this step, which he hesitated to take, but also because I felt 
no real inclination to the profession, I retired from It." 

In a letter written to Ward, December, 1844, Emerson says: 
"I have an admirable paper on Spinoza sent me months ago for 
the Dial by a correspondent whom I have just discovered to be 
Elliot Cabot, in the law school at Cambridge, son of Samuel Cabot. 
Do you know him.^ He seems to be a master in the abstruse science 
of psychology." This shows that the philosophic tendency and 
the studies in Germany already bore fruit. Cabot's name also 
had already been found among the attendants of the Symposia 
mentioned in the first pages of this book. After the death of the 



yames Elliot Cabot 263 

Dial^ mainly at the urgency of Theodore Parker and some others 
who felt that the young literature and the crying reforms of New- 
England required an organ — Parker said "a Dial with a beard" 
— the Massachusetts Quarterly Review was started, but lived only 
two years. During that time Cabot was its corresponding sec- 
retary. 

Agassiz had, in the year after his arrival here, decided to make 
America his home, and been appointed to the professorship of 
geology and zoology in the Scientific School, Mr. Lawrence's new 
gift to Harvard. Cabot was one of his first pupils, and, in the 
summer of 1848, followed the master, one of his twelve pupils, 
in his expedition to explore the Lake Superior region. By the 
camp-fire in the evenings after a long day exploring the cliffs or 
catching the fish, Agassiz lectured to the company, Cabot taking 
careful notes. He also kept a narrative journal of the expedition 
which was published on their return. 

The Boston Athenaeum was to have a worthy building at the 
head of Beacon Street, and Edward Cabot's plan for it had been 
accepted in 1848. He wished, however, to go abroad and study 
some fine buildings to improve his detail, and gladly left Elliot 
in charge of the business concerns of the office and in relation with 
Mr. George Dexter, the engineer. Mr. Cabot, in the autobiograph- 
ical notes, says: "I thought I might help Edward to systematize 
his accounts and methods. Anyway, I went there and got in- 
terested in learning something of the business, and even man- 
aged to run the office, and to put up some houses. ... At that 
time there were no architects or hardly any, and people had not 
got in the way of employing anybody but the carpenter, under the 
owner's direction. I soon became able to help those who knew 
less than I, and, with the collaboration of your uncle Harry Lee, 
built the offices now occupied by the Cunard Line, also the rear 
part of the Union Building, his Brookllne house, and many 
others." When, in 1852, the builder of the Boston Theatre got 
into difficulties with the design. Colonel Lee, one of the directors, 
got the business turned over to the Cabots, although he himself 
had some part in the design. Mr. Cabot says, "I worked hard at 



264 The Saturday Club 

the Boston Theatre plans to settle the curves of the boxes and 
other points concerning the auditorium, and also at the building 
of sundry houses." Yet he says that " this episode was interesting, 
and filled the time agreeably, but hardly worth while, if it was not 
to be taken in hand more firmly." 

In 1857, Mr. Cabot was most happily married and, with his 
wife, Elizabeth Dwight, spent a year abroad, mostly in Italy. 
He built his house in Brookllne on their return, his last archi- 
tectural work, except the summer cottage in Beverly Farms. 
Thereafter his life was passed at home, always a student, and 
doing faithfully such duties as were laid upon him by those who 
knew his quality. Though he joined the Drill Club which, in 
1 861, gave some preliminary training to men afterwards dis- 
tinguished as officers in the war, he, feeling no fitness in himself, 
only did so to be prepared in case a levee en masse was required, 
but worked hard for the Sanitary Commission in Boston. He 
served on the Brookllne School Committee for many years; lec- 
tured on Kant at Harvard the first year that "University Lec- 
tures" were established, and was also made "Instructor in Logic" 
to criticize seniors' "forensics." The Alumni chose him as Over- 
seer in 1875, and he served diligently for six years as chairman of 
the Committee to visit the College. This visitation by outside 
experts of the different departments, and their reports to the 
Government, might well seem, then and now, likely to be dis- 
tinctly serviceable in criticisms and suggestions, but Cabot found 
that "nothing of the kind was wanted by any considerable num- 
ber of persons, most of the Overseers preferring to leave things 
in the hands of the Faculties and Corporation, reserving only a 
right to protest" — in which view he came to concur. Meantime, 
he did much advisory work at the Athenaeum Library and the 
new Museum of Fine Arts. He was an eminently fit member of 
the Managing Board because of his classic taste and true artistic 
instinct. 

In a letter to Henry James, Sr., Mr. Cabot made an interesting 
remark on Clubs; but he was speaking of quite another one than 
the Saturday Club: "How is it that Clubs and meetings are so 
apt to grow abortive in the direct ratio of their numbers.'' — I 



yames Elliot Cabot 265 

mean of the number of members. There are many pleasant men 
there, but they seem paralyzed by coming together at a table." 

Henry James, Jr., speaks of having: "A considerable cluster of 
letters addressed by my father to Mr. Cabot, most accomplished 
of Bostonians, most 'cultivated' even among the cultivated, as 
we used to say, and of a philosophic acuteness to which my father 
highly testified, with which indeed he earnestly contended. The 
correspondence in question covered, during the years I include, 
philosophic ground and none other." 

Emerson quotes with pleasure this sentence from Cabot: "The 
complete incarnation of spirit, which is the definition of Beauty, 
demands that there shall be no point from which it is absent, and 
none in which it abides." 

From the days of the Symposium Mr. Emerson had an admira- 
tion for Cabot, though they did not often meet. He used to say, 
"Elliot Cabot has a Greek mind," He was disappointed when he 
did not find him at the Club, for Cabot did not often come, — and 
so in his last years when his memory began to fail, he rather 
counted on sitting by him. 

But a closer and very happy relation with this friend was soon 
to come. Mr. Emerson in 1871 was struggling under annoying 
pressure to revise and arrange some essays for a promised volume. 
It was now beyond his powers. He had learned that a London 
publisher meant to gather various occasional addresses and es- 
says by him, unprotected by copyright, and print them for his 
own advantage as a new volume of the Works. Through the loyal 
help of Mr. Moncure D. Conway this project was stopped on con- 
dition that Mr. Emerson would revise this material and contribute 
other lectures and essays. He had begun the task, no longer easy 
for him, when his house was nearly destroyed by fire, and from 
the shock, the exposure, and fatigue he became weak and ill. 
His memory had already begun to fail to some degree, making 
composition more difficult. Through the determined kindness of a 
host of friends his house was rebuilt, and he, meantime, sent to 
Europe and to the Nile with his daughter. He returned looking 
well and in good general health, but the English firm pressed him 
for the new book which, when he attempted to go on with it, 



2 66 T^he Saturday Club 

hung like a dead weight upon him. It became evident that he 
was no longer equal to the task. 

In the year before, the question of who should deal with his 
manuscripts when he was gone had been in his thought, and Mr. 
Cabot's name was the one which he wistfully mentioned, but 
felt that the favour was so great that he could not venture to ask 
it from his friend. But now the case became urgent. So, Mr. 
Emerson's family, with his permission, presented the matter for 
Mr. Cabot's consideration. With entire kindness he consented 
to give what help he could, and thus lifted the last load from Mr. 
Emerson's shoulders. The relief was complete and rendered his 
remaining years happy. At last he could see and come near to the 
friend whom he had valued at a distance for years. Mr. Cabot's 
frequent visits, often for several days at a time, were a great 
pleasure. Just how large Mr. Cabot's share in preparing for the 
press Letters and Social Aims was he tells with entire frankness 
in the preface to that volume. Mr. Emerson furnished the mat- 
ter, — almost all written years before, — but Mr. Cabot the 
arrangement and much of the selection. All was submitted to 
Mr. Emerson's approval, but he always spoke to his friend of the 
volume as "your book." 

The last measure of relief was Mr. Cabot's promise to be his 
literary executor when the time should come. This great task, a 
labour of years, dealing with the correspondence, and setting in 
order the writings, private and public, of more than half a cen- 
tury — confused, too, from Mr. Emerson's habit of using sheets 
in different lectures — was done as nearly perfectly as was pos- 
sible. Although Mr. Emerson lived ten years after the burning of 
the house, and sometimes read lectures, his production ended 
with that event. 

On the afternoon of his death and conscious of its near ap- 
proach, Mr. Emerson was told that his loyal friend had just ar- 
rived. With a joyful smile he exclaimed, "Elliot Cabot, Praise!" 
took his hand as he came to the bedside, and soon after became 
unconscious. 

Mr. Cabot's final and excellent service was the writing the 
Life of his friend. In his autobiographical notes he speaks of 



yames Elliot Cabot 267 

the memoir thus modestly, "Into it I put a good deal of diligent 
work, though when I came to look at it as a whole after it was done, 
I agreed with the critics, who thought it would have been benefited 
by a freer tone and a more assured utterance." 

Cabot goes on with an account of his later years: "If you were to 
ask me at this present moment what then I was doing, or aiming 
to do, from that time to this ... I might say perhaps that I was 
seeking satisfactory solutions to the great problems of life, and 
that I, upon the whole, succeeded in satisfying myself, but never 
got any conclusion into shape for any statement that seemed worth 
while. Very likely I lacked the power of concentration, and, in 
the endeavour to grasp the whole, let things slip before I had done 
with them. Hence I was much better as critic than as construc- 
tive workman. . . . However this may be, my discursive habit of 
mind, though it has been fatal to success, has not much, if at all, 
disturbed my enjoyment of what the day has sent. My life has, 
thus far, been a very happy one, and very much because of the 
varieties of my interests and sympathies. In my younger days, 
'culture,' which is the cultivation of this tendency, seemed to 
many persons the end of education. Nowadays the stream runs 
the other way, and 'liberal culture' is called 'dilettantism'; I 
have come to think the modern way, upon the whole, nearer the 
truth; but it ought not to prevent us from seeing that deliver- 
ance from narrowness and prejudice is one of the constituent ele- 
ments of education." 

Elliot Cabot was a man clean-cut in features, body, and mind; 
hence in speech. He was a man perfectly upright morally, and 
almost of the ascetic type, but this was from natural hardihood 
and simple tastes. Like his race, he was not afraid, but he was not 
aggressive. His manners were perfect. He was alert, of quick and 
delicate perception, and did immediately the right thing. He 
seemed a little reserved, and, while one talked to him, his face was 
under so complete control that it began to seem a little Rhada- 
manthine — when suddenly his smile or genial laugh would come 
assuring of interest and appreciation. Though critical, he was 
kindly so, being, withal, singularly modest, overmuch so in his 



2 68 The Saturday Club 

appreciation of his own work and probably quite unconscious of 
his elevating influence. It was my good fortune to see much of 
him in my father's house and in his own family during the last 
twenty years of his life. 

Even had he not done any of the excellent and varied works that 
interested, or were given to him to do, along the pathway of his 
life, it was a cause of active joy to see him whether at my father's 
house, in his own study, or surrounded by his wife and children 
in his charming home. It was good to know that such a man 
existed. Doing was there, but being seemed enough. 

E. W. E. 



SAMUEL GRIDLEY HOWE 

"It has fallen to my lot to know, both in youth and in age, several 
of the most romantic characters of our century; and among them 
one of the most romantic was certainly the hero of these pages. 
That he was indeed a hero, the events of his life sufficiently de- 
clare." These sentences, written by Mr. Frank B. Sanborn in the 
preface to the biography of this great man, are true. Here was a 
Helper and an Illuminator from youth to age. He may well be 
likened to the heroes of the myths of the race, Prometheus bring- 
ing celestial fire to warm benumbed humanity and illuminate their 
darkness, or the militant saints who slew dragons and giants to 
free the imprisoned or enslaved. Fearless in fighting armed foes, 
or, far harder, against fortified oppressions, ill-usage due to ig- 
norance and to apparently hopeless physical defects, he showed 
the truth of another brave fighter's ^ word, "The world advances 
by impossibilities achieved." Yet his striving and his conquests 
all were forced on him by compassion for the wronged and help- 
less, or those in bonds, or born, — 

"Oh, worst imprisonment! 
A dungeon to themselves." 

Mrs. Howe, in her memoirs of her husband, tells us that he 
was born in Boston, on Pleasant Street, in 1801, the son of Joseph 
N. Howe, shipowner and proprietor of a rope-walk, and Patty 
Gridley, a beautiful woman and tender mother. Here follow two 
anecdotes showing the inborn courage of the boy: — 

At the Latin School, Master Gould undertook to ferule him 
until he shed tears, and kept on until he almost reduced his little 
hand to a jelly. 

On an occasion of great political excitement, all the boys in 
school were Federalists but two, and undertook to force those two 
to come over to their side; one did, but little Sam Howe would n't, 
and was thrown downstairs, head first. 

* General Charles Russell Lowell. 



270 The Saturday Club 

At Brown University, Howe was principally distinguished for 
enterprising and daring mischief. Nevertheless, he brought away 
good drill in Latin, graduated in 1821, and studied medicine in 
Boston under Drs. Ingalls, Jacob Bigelow, Parkman, and John 
Collins Warren, taking his degree in 1824. 

When Greece revolted against Turkish tyranny and misrule, 
and young Howe, who had now his medical degree, heard that 
Byron had gone to her aid, he too sailed as a volunteer in her 
cause, but did not arrive until his hero had died at Missolonghi.^ 
He joined the patriots, shared with courage and good common 
sense their dangers and hardships, acting as surgeon, but also 
personally fighting. He tried to organize hospitals and ambulances, 
but soon the regular Greek army broke up before the energetic and 
fierce Ibrahim Pacha, and thereafter it was only guerilla warfare. 
Howe liked the Greeks, allowed for their shortcomings due to want 
of drill and long years of bondage to Turkey. He praised their 
•temperance and hardihood and stood by them in their mountain 
warfare or short expeditions in small vessels, while the resistance 
dragged on in spite of the interference of the European Powers, 
who in 1827 defeated the Turkish fleet. After six years, he saw 
that his best service to this brave people, whose resources were 
exhausted, was to plead for them in America, and his eloquence 
won for them $60,000, clothing and supplies. He also established 
on the Isthmus of Corinth an exile colony. Greece still cherishes 
his memory. 

On Dr. Howe's return from Europe in 1831, not quite thirty 
years old, it was a question to what purpose he should turn his 
splendid activity. But before relating his difficult enterprises 
and beneficent deeds, it is well to picture this young Arthurian 
knight of New England. He was tall, spare, and strong. His 
daughter, from testimony of those who knew him then, says 
that he seems to have foreshadowed Kipling's fine description of 
a youth: — 

"He trod the ling like a buck in Spring, 
And he looked like a lance in rest." 

^ My uncle, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, who was Howe's friend, told me that Byron's 
helmet hung on the Doctor's hat-tree, and was so small that few people could put it on. 



Samuel Gridley Howe 271 

His soldierly bearing was marked through life, and, though his 
naturally fair complexion was browned by long exposure to sun 
and wind, fine colour shone through. His hair was jet black. The 
eager, deep-set eyes — blue — are very striking in his pictures. 
In youth he was clean-shaven. The redundance of hair and beard 
in the latest photographs masks his fine head and face. 

But to the works that waited the coming man. While Howe 
served in Greece, our Legislature had sanctioned the plan of the 
New England Asylum for the Blind, Next year. Dr. John Dix 
Fisher, who had just returned from Paris greatly moved by seeing 
the schools for the blind of Abbe Hauy, sought for the right man 
to take charge of the Boston school. Mrs. Richards writes: 
"Walking along Boylston Street one day in company with two 
other members of the committee, they met my father, and Dr. 
Fisher's search was over. 'Here is Howe!' he said to his compan- 
ions ; ' the very man we have been looking for all this time.' It was 
the meetingofflint and steel; the spark was struck instantly. Doubt, 
hesitation, depression vanished from my father's mind like mist be- 
fore the rising sun. 'In a few days,' he says, 'I made an arrange- 
ment to take charge of the enterprise, then in embryo, and started 
at once for Europe, to get the necessary information, engage 
teachers, etc.'" Rejoicing in what he found in France, Howe 
wrote to his Trustees: "There can be no more delightful specta- 
cle than is presented by these establishments, where you may see 
a hundred young blind persons, changed from listless, inactive, 
helpless beings into intelligent, active, and happy ones; they run 
about, and pursue their different kinds of work with eager industry 
and surprising success; when engaged in intellectual pursuits, the 
awakened mind is painted in their intelligent countenances." 

But while Howe was preparing in Paris to do a similar wonder- 
ful work in America, Lafayette, knowing that he was to visit Berlin, 
asked him to go farther and carry food and clothes to the suffer- 
ing Polish refugees. Howe was seized by Prussian authorities and 
kept in prison for five weeks, and then only was rescued, after 
severe treatment, by the chance discovery by an American friend 
of his arbitrary seizure. His release was demanded by the 
United States Minister in Paris. 



272 "The Saturday Club 

Howe returned, and with kindness, endless patience, and great 
spirit began his work as Superintendent of the Perkins Institu- 
tion for the Blind, for Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins ^ had 
given his line house and grounds In Pearl Street to the Asylum. 
Dr. Howe personally taught pupils and with increasing success. 

Then came the case of Laura Bridgman, eight years old, with 
every sense but touch, smell, and taste absolutely shut off from 
early Infancy — all avenues by which any but the lowest material 
for thought could enter seemingly barred beyond hope. If any 
one would gain, or refresh, knowledge of Howe's miraculous suc- 
cess with this case let him read Dickens's moving account of it 
in his American Notes. Later, Dr. Howe made a plea for such a 
case, when, visiting an English workhouse, he found an old woman 
deaf, dumb, and crippled, though, as having sight, nothing like 
so bad as the case in which he had triumphed. This was his plea: 
"Can nothing be done to disinter this human soul.'' — perhaps 
not too late! The whole neighbourhood would rush to save this 
woman if she were buried alive in the caving of a pit, and labour 
with zeal until she were dug out. Now, if there were one who had 
as much patience as zeal, and who, having carefully observed how 
a little child learns language, would attempt to lead her gently 
through the same course, he might possibly awaken her to a con- 
sciousness of her immortal nature. The chance is small, indeed, 
but with a smaller chance they would have dug desperately for 
her in the pit, — and is the life of the soul of less import than 
that of the body.?" 

Charles Sumner and Cornelius Felton were then warm and ad- 
miring friends of Howe, though in the days of the struggle against 
Slavery, the latter grew cool. Both were greatly interested In 
Laura Bridgman's case and took Miss Julia Ward to the Blind 
Asylum to see her. Looking out of the window, she for the first 
time saw young Howe — riding fast up the hill on his spirited 
black horse, with crimson embroidered saddle-cloth. ^ He entered, 
and her future husband was presented to her. Her daughter, 

* The uncle of four of our members, Charles C. and Edward N. Perkins, John M. 
Forbes, and J. Elliot Cabot. 

2 Evidently a memento of Greece. 



Samuel Gridley Howe 273 

Mrs. Richards, writes: "His presence was like the flash of a 
sword. There was a power in his look, an aspect of unresting, 
untiring energy, which impressed all who looked upon him; they 
turned to look again. Said a lady of his own age to me, 'Your 
father was the handsomest man I ever saw.' His personal modesty 
was as great as his personal charm, of which, be it said, he never 
seemed in the least aware. Absence of self-consciousness was one 
of his strong characteristics." 

Howe welcomed and had strength for all new work. To him, 
worse than the darkened eyes, ears without hearing, and re- 
sultant speechless lips, seemed the crippled or aborted brain. He 
resolved to do all that man could to help the idiot human beings, 
male and female, then often treated like beasts and kept in pens 
— even in the barn — by their families. St. Vincent de Paul, 
early In the seventeenth century, had, at his Priory, tried to im- 
prove the lot of idiots; Itard, philosopher and surgeon, at the end 
of the eighteenth, had experimented again with slightly better 
results; but Dr. Edouard Seguin, his pupil, saying, "Idiocy is 
prolonged infancy; hence physiological education of the senses 
must precede psychical education of mind," made wonderful ad- 
vances in the treatment of these unfortunates. His methods 
carried on by Dr. Howe, and Dr. Fernald, his able successor, have 
wrought out results in the instruction, usefulness, and happiness 
of these unfortunates almost beyond hope. 

Dr. Howe married Julia Ward in 1843. They went for their 
wedding journey to Europe and the Doctor enjoyed meeting ad- 
vanced physiciins and philanthropists, and improved the oppor- 
tunities which he found to study all sorts of humane reforms. 

It should have been said that one of Howe's most valued friends 
was Horace Mann and each found in the other a man after his 
own heart. Mann was equally interested in the instruction of 
deaf mutes, and together they worked towards getting articulate 
speech from the deaf and the dumb instead of sign language, and 
also for lip-reading. Of Howe on the Boston School Committee, 
Horace Mann said: "Such work could only have been done by 
an angel, or Sam Howe." 

After his return from Europe and establishing the School for 



2 74 The Saturday Club 

the Idiotic and Feeble-minded, Howe took active part in the agi- 
tation against Slavery, but also he remembered those in bonds at 
home, and worked for prison reform, and looked after the insane, 
and tried to give discharged convicts a chance in life. He then 
sought for the causes of idiocy, "with startling results." 

The Cretans rose against the oppressive Turk. Howe, helped 
by Holmes, Phillips, Edward Everett Hale, and others, raised a 
large sum for them, and set forth to their aid. He was well-nigh 
shipwrecked in the Mediterranean, and largely through his ready 
common sense in supplying a sail from the deck awning, was the 
little steamer with its broken machinery saved. Though a price was 
set on Dr. Howe's head, he landed in Crete to examine the situa- 
tion, but in a necessarily very brief visit. From youth to age Howe 
believed in and practised man's reserve right of revolution; as in 
foreign countries, so also at home when government became un- 
just beyond bearing. He held that the citizen must decide when 
that point was reached, but also must face the risk of his revolt. 
This he always was ready to do. He was active in the resistance 
to the surrender of fugitive slaves.^ He helped supply rifles to the 
Kansas settlers to resist the Border ruffians tolerated by the Ad- 
ministration. From 1843 he believed that actual force would have 
to be used to get rid of slavery, and in 1859 had helped John Brown 
in his preparations for some such blow. 

The Saturday Club chose Howe a member in the first year of 
the war which was to remove the reproach on Liberty to whose 
cause his life was vowed. Social clubs are always rather shy of re- 
formers, as men possessed of one idea, hence kill-joys. Howe was 
one of the great reformers, but as a joyful and successful doer, not 
preacher; spirited and genial, with tact and a sense of humour. 
His daughter, Mrs. Richards, writes of him: "He was astonish- 
ingly merry ^ for so busy and so intense a person. The meetings of 
the Club were among his great pleasures. He would make a great 
effort, rather than miss a meeting. His most intimate friends were 
Sumner, Felton, Longfellow." 

1 Robert Carter, Esq., told Dana that Dr. Howe offered to lead a mob of two hundred 
to storm the United States Court-House and rescue Anthony Burns. Elsewhere it would 
appear that Rev. T. W. Higginson's valiant winning of the door, for a moment with but 
two or three followers, was futile because of a mistake in the signal and failure of organ- 
ization, and that Howe and others, brave and determined, were too late. 



Samuel Gridley Howe 275 

Howe was well beyond the military age, but as soon as the Sani- 
tary Commission was formed he was intelligently helpful, happy 
to help the cause of Freedom. 

Mrs. Howe wrote of her husband that "he had a prophetic 
quality of mind. . . . What the general public would most prize and 
hold fast is the conviction so clearly expressed by him, that hu- 
manity has a claim to be honoured and aided, even where its 
traits appear most abnormal and degraded. He demanded for 
the blind an education which should make them self-supporting; 
for the idiot the training of his poor and maimed capabilities; for 
the insane and the criminal the watchful and redemptive tutelage 
of society. In the world, as he would have had it, there should 
have been neither paupers nor outcasts. He did all that one man 
could do to advance the coming of this millennial consummation." 

Seemingly hopeless works of mercy for whole classes of helpless 
people which Dr. Howe dauntlessly took in hand were great suc- 
cesses, seemed almost like old-time miracles. 

At the end of his life he might have cried, like the rejoicing 
Sigurd in Morris's epic, — 

"It is done! and who shall undo it of all that are left alive .^ 
Shall the gods, and the high gods' masters with the tale of the righteous 
strive?" 

Dr. Henry I. Bowditch said: "With the exception of Garibaldi, 
I have always considered Samuel Gridley Howe as the manliest 
man it has been my fortune to meet in the world. . . . When such 
men die, even comparative strangers have a sense of personal loss." 

After Howe's death, one of the South Boston pupils said, "He 
will take care of the blind in Heaven. Won't he take care of us 
too?" 

This sketch cannot be more fitly ended than with these verses 
from Charles T. Brooks's poem in Howe's honour: — 

"He gave — with what a keen delight, — 
Eyes to the fingers of the blind, 
To feel their way with inner light 
Along the sunny hills of mind. 

" And as a pilgrim of the night. 
Groping his darksome way forlorn, 



276 The Saturday Club 



Shows on his kindling cheeks the light 
Reflected from the breaking morn, — 

" So, as along the raised highway 
Their eager fingers hurried on. 
How o'er each sightless face the ray 
Of joy — an inner sunrise — shone! 

"Nay, was there one who seemed by fate 
Cut off from converse with her kind. 
Death's liberating hand to wait 
In threefold walls — deaf, dumb, and blind, 

*' E'en there his patient love could find, 
By the fine thread of touch, a way 
To guide the groping, struggling mind 
From its dark labyrinth into day." 



E. W. E. 



FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE 

When Frederick Henry Hedge died, in August, 1890, at the age 
of eighty-five, his name stood first in order of seniority upon the 
list of officers of Harvard University, although he had retired 
from active service. He was also the oldest man of the Saturday 
Club circle, but as he was not elected until 1861, there were a few 
surviving associates — Dwight, Lowell, Holmes, and Whittier — 
whose actual membership in the Club was slightly longer than his. 
In his later years Dr. Hedge's attendance upon Club dinners was 
infrequent. The honorary degree of LL.D., which he had received 
at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Harvard University 
in 1886, four years before his death, was the seal set by the com- 
munity upon a singularly faithful service to scholarship and re- 
ligion, but his real work had long been done. 

His distinctive quality and gift, as one looks back upon his 
career, was due in large measure to that good fortune of his youth 
which sent him to Germany. For Frederick Hedge was one of the 
earliest of those American Argonauts who sought in the phi- 
losophy and literature of Germany, in the great Romantic epoch, 
such treasures as might enrich their own country. A fascinating 
book of intellectual and spiritual adventure may yet be written 
from the material furnished by the letters and journals of such 
pioneer students in Germany as Ticknor, Everett, Bancroft, 
Longfellow, and many another young man of that generation. 
Henry James's Life of W. W. Story is a masterly study of the later 
romantic impulse which drove young Americans to Italy. But 
the emigration to Germany was a more purely intellectual move- 
ment, and it affected the careers of a greater variety of men. Few 
of these men profited more than Hedge by his German experiences, 
and few made the riches of German thought more steadily useful 
to his American contemporaries. 

He was a mere lad of thirteen when his chance came. His father, 
Levi Hedge, tutor and professor of Logic at Harvard, sent him 
abroad in 18 18 under the care of young George Bancroft, of 



278 'The Saturday Club 

Worcester, who had been graduated from Harvard the year before. 
For the next five years Frederick Hedge pursued his German studies, 
at first In the Gymnasium of Ilfeld In Hanover, and then at Schulp- 
forte in Saxony. When he returned to Cambridge In 1823, he was 
able to enter the Junior class at Harvard, where he was graduated 
in 1825. He proceeded to the Divinity School, and was ordained 
a minister In West Cambridge, now Arlington, in 1825. For the 
next half-dozen years one constantly meets his name In the list 
of those aspiring young liberals of Cambridge and Boston who 
were soon to rejoice In Emerson's "Divinity School Address." 
Hedge was a leader In this group, much as young John Sterling 
was a leader among the English disciples of Coleridge. Transcen- 
dentalism was In the Boston air, and had not Frederick Hedge, 
in his lucky boyhood, drunk of the very sources of this sacred 
stream .'* He attended the very first meeting of the Transcendental 
Club at the home of George Ripley In Boston, In September, 
1836. There was endless debate, a continual flutter of excite- 
ment, solemn symposia that occasionally bored even such a pa- 
tient listener as Emerson, — for this arch-radical wrote of a sym- 
posium at Dr. Levi Hedge's in 1838: "It was good. I nevertheless 
read to-day with wicked pleasure the saying ascribed to Kant, 
that 'detestable was the society of mere literary men.' It must 
be tasted sparingly to keep Its gusto. If you do not quit the high 
chair, lie quite down and roll on the ground a good deal, you be- 
come nervous and heavy-hearted. The poverty of topics, the very 
names of Carlyle, Channing, Cambridge, and the Reviews became 
presently Insupportable. The dog that was fed on sugar died." 

It was no doubt fortunate for Frederick Hedge that a call to the 
Unitarian pastorate in Bangor, Maine, in 1835, made him "quit 
the high chair" of fervid, futile Cambridge and Boston talk, and 
settle down to his professional duties, which were always solidly 
performed. Bangor was then a remote lumber town, on the edge 
of the Northern wilderness, but in Hedge's parish there were per- 
sons of cultivation and force. He had large leisure, after all, for 
his favourite German books, and there are local traditions of a 
pipe and occasional lapses Into verse. Emerson preached for him 
now and then, and is thought to have written some of his poems 



y^r^^Xt 




•:r. 



Frederick Henry Hedge 279 

in the Bangor parsonage. J. S. Dwight occupied Hedge's pulpit 
for tliree Sundays in 1839, and found "much more refined society" 
than he anticipated. "They are an active, public-spirited people," 
he wrote to his sister, "and are not afraid." It is pleasant to note 
that in the Reverend Mr. Hedge's eloquent Fourth of July ora- 
tion for 1838 he quotes effectively from his friend George Bancroft's 
History of the United States, the first volume of which had appeared 
in 1834. In 1 841 the Bangor clergyman was the Phi Beta Kappa 
orator at Cambridge, delivering a polished and persuasive, though 
scarcely an epoch-making, address on " Conservatism and Reform," 
in which the skilful quotations from Goethe are perhaps the most 
characteristic feature. Hedge was also, in the early forties, a 
contributor to the Dial. But the chief literary result of his fifteen 
years in Bangor was the publication in 1848 of the Prose Writers 
of Germany, containing excellent translations from twenty-eight 
authors, and rendering to the American public a service compar- 
able to that performed by Carlyle's translations from the German 
for the English public, a quarter of a century before. This book 
established Hedge's reputation as a scholar, and led, many a 
year later, to his appointment as Professor of German at Har- 
vard. 

In 1850 he left the quiet Bangor parish for a pulpit in Provi- 
dence. "Hedge lives just across the street from me," writes 
George William Curtis In 1851, "and we have many a cigar and 
chat. He preaches superb sermons." Harvard gave him the 
degree of D.D. in 1852. In the following year he published, with 
the collaboration of the Reverend F. D. Huntington, a collection 
of hymns, some of which were composed by Hedge himself and are 
to-day in wide use by American churches. In 1856, Dr. Hedge 
succeeded his father-in-law, the venerable Dr. John Pierce, — 
chronicler of so many Harvard Commencement seasons, — as 
pastor of the First Parish of Brookllne. A year later he was ap- 
pointed Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the Harvard Divinity 
School, though he continued to reside in Brookline until 1872. 
One day in that year he walked into the office of the young Presi- 
dent of Harvard College and surprised him by saying: "I under- 
stand that the professorship of German is vacant. I should like 



2 8o T'he Saturday Club 

to be appointed to that position." He added that he had grown 
weary of his clerical work in Brookline. President Eliot gravely 
promised to refer the question to the members of the Corporation, 
who, to the surprise of at least one person concerned, promptly 
voted for the appointment. Dr. Hedge accordingly removed to 
Cambridge and began his new duties. But he was now sixty-seven, 
and he held this professorship for four years only. His scholar- 
ship was unquestioned, but he seems not to have been a born 
teacher. In fact, one present member of the Club asseverates that 
Dr. Hedge was the worst teacher of German that ever lived. There 
are many claimants, however, for this distinction, and if Dr. 
Hedge is remembered as a somewhat testy and fussy old gentle- 
man in the classroom, it should also be borne in mind that as a 
writer and speaker he was steadily reaching a wide and influential 
audience. Many of his addresses on public occasions were admirably 
phrased, particularly his memorial discourse on Edward Everett 
in 1865. As editor of the Christian Examiner and contributor to 
the Christian Register and Unitarian Review he rendered notable 
service to his own denomination. His book on Reason in Reli- 
gion (1865) was a temperate plea for liberalism. A better-known 
volume, however, and representative of the author's ripest and 
wisest thoughts, is Ways of the Spirit, which was published in 
1877, a year after Dr. Hedge had laid down his college burdens. 
It exhibits wide reading in history and philosophy, a sympathetic 
understanding of many types of Christian belief, and glows with 
that faith In the endless progress of the soul which characterized 
the spiritual leadership of New England during Hedge's early man- 
hood. Rarely has an old man's book revealed a happier combina- 
tion of youthful ardour and tested wisdom. It is reported that the 
good Doctor's suflFerings with eczema during the last two years of 
his life caused him to reexamine his philosophical tenets as to the 
ordering of the universe, and forced him to the conclusion that the 
Devil had a much larger share in the government of this world than 
he had previously supposed. But he did not commit these new 
views to writing. 

No discoverable word survives of all that Dr. Hedge may have 
said at the Saturday Club table during his membership of twenty- 



Frederick Henry Hedge 281 

nine years. Perhaps his voice, so sonorous in the pulpit, lost some- 
thing of its authority in the presence of men more witty and bril- 
liant than himself, more prompt in the give-and-take of informal 
intercourse. Perhaps he ate and gave thanks in silence, dreaming 
of that great adventure of his boyhood, when he sailed with the 
Argonauts to find out the secret of Germany. 

B. P. 



ESTES HOWE 

Lovers of Samuel Johnson and of his circle of friends are never 
weary of speculating as to the personality of the lesser known P 

members of the most famous of Johnson's clubs. What did Dr. 
Nugent, Burke's agreeable father-in-law, really contribute to 
the club's wit and wisdom? Was Sir John Hawkins actually "a 
most unclubable man"? Was Bennet Langton really too fond of 
"talking from books" at club dinners? Some such curiosity as 
this is provoked by the minor or half-forgotten names upon the 
roll of the Saturday Club. Dr. Estes Howe, for example, was a 
personable gentleman of intellectual tastes and a useful citizen 
of Cambridge, but thirty years after his death he is recalled 
chiefly as an associate of other men, — as "Lowell's brother- 
in-law," or as "one of the Whist Club," or as a member of the 
Philosophers' Camp in the Adirondacks. He was always a bit 
overshadowed by his associates. Yet it is pleasant to think of 
him, much as one thinks of Dr. Nugent and Bennet Langton, as 
representing those every-day virtues and courtesies of social in- 
tercourse which are the real cement of a successful dining-club. 
And Estes Howe, though he missed an eminent place among his 
contemporaries, showed qualities that were lastingly attractive 
to men like Lowell and Emerson. In the "Preliminary Note to 
the Second Edition" of "A Fable for Critics," Lowell consoles 
himself, in the presence of hostile criticisms of his poems, by the 
reminder that he can take refuge in the society of his three stanch 
friends of the Whist Club, Dr. Estes Howe, "Don Roberto" 
Carter, and John Holmes: "I can walk with the Doctor, get facts 
from the Don, or draw out the Lambish quintessence of John, 
and feel nothing more than a half-comic sorrow, to think that, they 
all (the criticisms) will be lying to-morrow tossed carelessly up 
on the waste-paper shelves, and forgotten by all but their half- 
dozen selves." In W. J. Stillman's account of "the Philosophers' 
Camp," now reprinted in The Old Rome and the New and again 
in Stillman's Autobiography, there are pleasant glimpses of Estes 



Estes Howe 283 

Howe in the woods. Emerson, a fellow-camper, writes thus of him 
in his "Adirondack Note-Book": — 

" Not in vain did Fate dispense 
Generous heart and solid sense, 
Force to make a leader sage, 
In honour and self-honouring. 
Where thou art, society 
Still will live and best will be, 
Who dost easily and well 
What costs the rest expense of brain, 
Ancestral merits richly dwell, 
And the lost remain. 
And in thy life, the honoured sire 
Will fill his stinted chalice higher 
And Fate repair the world's mishap 
And fill the gap 
By the completed virtues of the heir." 

The closing lines of this rough sketch, recalling the "stinted 
chalice" of "the honoured sire," refer to the untimely death 
of Howe's father, Samuel Howe, a distinguished lawyer of west- 
ern Massachusetts. Graduated from Williams College, Samuel 
Howe first practised law in Worthington, where he had William 
Cullen Bryant as a pupil in his office. He removed to North- 
ampton in 1820, and in 1821 was appointed Judge of the Court of 
Common Pleas. He died in Boston in 1828 at the age of forty- 
three, leaving the reputation of having been one of the best-read 
lawyers of his day and a judge of great promise. 

His son Estes was born In Worthington on July 13, 18 14. Upon 
the removal of the family to Northampton in the boy's sixth 
year, he attended school there, and after Joseph G. Cogswell and 
George Bancroft opened their Round Hill School in Northamp- 
ton In 1823, young Howe became their pupil. Many future mem- 
bers of the Saturday Club, among them John Murray Forbes, — 
who was Howe's second cousin, — John Lothrop Motley, and 
Samuel G. Ward, were also students at Round Hill. But Estes 
Howe was not happy there, and had a cordial dislike for George 
Bancroft. He was therefore sent to Phillips Academy, Andover, 
and entered Harvard College at fourteen In 1828, six months after 
his father's death. His mother, finding it necessary to support her 



284 The Saturday Club 



four children, removed to Cambridge and opened a boarding-house 
for students, at first in Dunster Street, then in Appian Way, and 
finally in a house she built on Garden Street, next but one to 
Christ Church. She was a woman of peculiar refinement and of 
marked conversational powers. Charles Sumner, a future Satur- 
day Club friend of her son, boarded with her throughout his col- 
lege course, and Arthur Hugh Clough, the English poet, was also 
a guest at her table during his residence in Cambridge. The luck 
of the alphabet, which was responsible for so many enduring col- 
lege friendships in the old days of required chapel and required 
studies, brought Estes Howe, for his four years with the class of 
1832, to the seat next John Holmes, and they became lifelong 
cronies. John Sullivan Dwight was another classmate. 

Howe was graduated from the Harvard Medical School in 
1835, and moved to the then frontier State of Ohio, where he prac- 
tised medicine for a while at Cincinnati and afterward at Pome- 
roy, a small town on the Ohio River. Here he varied his profes- 
sional duties by running a flour-mill and getting a dangerous taste 
for business which was ultimately to spoil his career as a doctor, 
and involve him, late in life, in financial disaster. He married a 
Cambridge lady, Harriet Spelman, in 1838, and after her death in 
1843, he gave up the Pomeroy ventures and returned to Cam- 
bridge, where he soon abandoned his profession, and interested 
himself in Abolition politics. He was a member of the Massa- 
chusetts Free-Soil Convention in 1848, a supporter of Dr. Palfrey 
for Representative in Congress, and was one of the six signers of 
the Appeal to Freemen of the' Fourth District to stand up boldly 
against the encroachments of Slavery. Judge Howe headed this 
list, and Sumner and Dana had worked in the Convention, 

In these years Howe saw much of James Russell Lowell, who 
had married Maria White, of Watertown, one of four ardent and 
attractive sisters, whose home was a centre of Abolition energy. 
In December, 1848, Dr. Howe married the eldest of these sisters, 
Lois White, and thus became Lowell's brother-in-law. They 
made their first home in Mason Street, Cambridge, but removed 
in 1852 to the large house on the corner of Oxford and Kirkland 
Streets. This house, happily filled with children and with con- 



Kstes Howe 285 

stant guests, is pictured in Mr. Scudder's Lije of Lowell. For 
it was here that Lowell left his motherless daughter, with her 
governess, Miss Frances Dunlap, when he went abroad in 1855. 
Here he returned in 1856, married Miss Dunlap in 1857, and here 
they continued to live until they removed, three or four years 
later, to Elmwood. 

Estes Howe was still known as "Doctor," but he was now en- 
grossed in the miscellaneous interests which filled the remainder 
of his life. He was the pioneer of Cambridge street railways, 
water-works, and gas-works, and served as treasurer of all these 
companies. He was interested in Nova Scotia and mines, in a 
gold mine, in various Vermont and Massachusetts railroads, was 
Inspector of State Prisons, and served in the State Senate. Like 
most of the old Free-Soilers, he was a stanch Republican, although 
he turned Mugwump in 1884, and had long been a Free-Trader. 

Dr. Howe was elected a member of the Saturday Club in 1861, 
and was constant in his attendance until his death in 1887. 
Lowell was by no means the only Saturday Club man with whom 
he stood on terms of intimacy. Sumner, Andrew, and Judge Hoar 
were among his warm friends, and the letters of Lowell and of 
John Holmes give many pleasant pictures of meetings of the 
famous Whist Club. — After Lowell and Carter had left Cam- 
bridge, John Bartlett and Charles F. Choate took their places. 
Dr. Howe was a passionate lover of the theatre, was a charter 
member of the Union Club of Boston, and enjoyed particularly 
his outings with the Adirondack Club. Although in no sense 
a man of letters, his literary and learned companions found him 
an agreeable associate, with a charming talent for wide-ranging 
talk and a fund of delightful stories. 

He met with fortitude the financial reverses which pressed heav- 
ily upon him after his sixtieth year. The temptation to vision- 
ary speculations was too strong to be resisted, and his eggs were 
always in too many different baskets. The end of all these mul- 
tifarious and ever-hopeful activities came in his seventy-third 
year, after a long and obscure illness, which proved to be cancer. 
Both of his sons had died before him. Yet he seems to have main- 
tained until the very close his serenity of temper, the wholesome 



2 86 The Saturday Club 

sweetness and confidence which had endeared him to his friends. 
"A genuine man," Charles Eliot Norton once called him, and Mr. 
Norton's phrases were fastidious. One can easily guess how this 
man of "generous heart and solid sense" endeared himself to his 
associates of the Club, and can understand why Lowell, In the 
sensitiveness and passion of his early years of authorship, could 
find comfort in "talk with the Doctor." 

B. P. 



Chapter IX 
1862 

In the dark time in the autumn of 1861 after the rout of Bull Run and before any- 
cheering successes of the Army of the Potomac, Lowell, striving against despair, wrote 
'<The Washers of the Shroud." The Three Fates are preparing it for what nation? 
He pleads with them to spare ours. They answer : — 

**When grass-blades stiffen with red battle-dew. 
Ye deem we choose the victor and the slain: 
Say, choose we them that shall be leal and true. 
To the heart's longing, the high faith of brain? 
Yet there the victory lies, if ye but knew. 

**Three roots bear up Dominion: Knowledge, Will, — 
These twain are strong, but stronger yet the third, — 
Obedience. — 'Tis the great tap-root that still. 
Knit round the rock of Duty, is not stirred. 
Though Heaven-loosed tempests spend their utmost skill. 

*'Is the doom sealed for Hesper? 1 'Tis not we 
Denounce it, but the Law before all time: 
The brave makes danger opportunity; 
The waverer, paltering with the chance sublime. 
Dwarfs it to peril; which shall Hesper be? 

**Hath he let vultures climb his eagle's seat 
To make Jove's bolts purveyors of their maw? 
Hath he the Many's plaudits found more sweet 
Than Wisdom? held Opinion's wind for Law? 
Then let him hearken for the doomster's feet! 

"Rough are the steps, slow-hewn in flintiest rock. 
States climb to power by; slippery those with gold 
Down which they stumble to eternal mock: 
No chafFerer's hand shall long the sceptre hold. 
Who, given a Fate to shape, would sell the block. 

**We sing old Sagas, songs of weal and woe. 
Mystic because too cheaply understood; 
Dark sayings are not ours; men hear and know, 

^ That is, America, the Western star. 



2 88 "The Saturday Club 

See Evil weak, see strength alone in Good, 
Yet hope to stem God's fire with walls of tow. 

**Time Was unlocks the riddle of Time Is, 
That offers choice of glory or of gloom; 
The solver makes Time Shall Be surely his. 
But hasten. Sisters! for even now the tomb 
Grates its slow hinge and calls from the abyss. *^' 

**But not for him!" I cried, **not yet for him 
Whose large horizon westering, star by star 
Wins from the void to where on Ocean's rim 
The sunset shuts the world with golden bar — 
Not yet his thews shall fail, his eye grow dim! 

*'God give us peace! not such as lulls to sleep. 
But sword on thigh, and brow with purpose knit! 
And let our Ship of State to harbour sweep. 
Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit. 
And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap!" 

So cried I with clenched hands and passionate pain. 
Thinking of dear ones by Potomac's side; — 
Again the loon laughed mocking, and again 
The echoes bayed far down the night and died. 
While waking I recalled my wandering brain. 

CHARLES SUMNER was the only member chosen by the 
Club this year. Sumner had spoken strongly and clearly 
on the matter of the seizure and of the necessary giving up to 
England of the Confederate emissaries. Longfellow, still bowed 
down with his loss, wrote to his friend in January: "I have no 
heart for anything. There is only one thought in my mind. You 
know what it is. . . . We will not speak of that, but rather of 
your admirable speech on the Trent affair. It is very clear and 
thorough and statesman-like. Everybody reads it; and none 
reads it but to praise. Curtis was here yesterday and thinks it 
admirable; so does Norton; so does T. [Appleton]; so does Mrs. 
Kemble; . . . and these, with one or two newspaper writers, are 
my * everybody.'" 

Another loss was to come to Longfellow which he felt greatly: 
"February 27th. News comes of Felton's death at his brother's 



i862 289 

In Chester [Pennsylvania]. I go down to see Agassiz, and find him 
in much distress. Dear good Felton! how much he is beloved!" 

Mr. Felton was at this time President of Harvard University. 
May 8, Longfellow writes: "Felton is universally regretted. He 
had thousands of friends and not one enemy. . . . He had a wider 
range of scholarship than any of us; and his nature to the last was 
pure, genial, and sympathetic. . . . His epitaph has been written 
in Greek by Sophocles, himself a Greek and Professor of Greek 
in the University. I send you a literal translation; like the original, 
it is in the elegiac, or hexameter and pentameter metre: — 

'Felton, dearest of friends, to the lands unseen thou departest, 

Snatched away, thou hast left sorrow and sighing behind! 
On thy companions, the dear ones, alas! the affliction has fallen; 
Hellas, of thee beloved, misses thy beautiful life.'" 

Not many days after President Felton's death, Longfellow had 
met in the street this "strange, eccentric man, with his blue cloak 
and wild, gray beard, his learning and his silence. He makes 
Diogenes a possibility," he adds. He brought his elegy for Fel- 
ton's gravestone, requesting Longfellow to render it in English.'- 

During the last exciting year, and the more serious, anxious 
one that now had begun, as the friends sat at table it sometimes 
happened that a burst of martial music shattered the conversa- 
tion; they left their seats and from the windows saw a blue- 
coated regiment, the colonel and staff riding at their head, march 
below them from the State House, where Governor Andrew had 
just reviewed them, toward the wharf, or the cars, to take pas- 
sage for the seat of war. Dr. Holmes, or Mr. Forbes, or Judge 
Hoar, or Mr. Longfellow might have seen from that balcony a son, 

* This scholar-hermit, bred in a monastery on Mount Athos, by strange chance trans- 
planted to No. 3 Holworthy Hall, in early middle age, lived and died there. We, who 
came to college during Felton's presidency, wondered and smiled when we saw this Greek 
professor, hardly more than five feet high, in his cloth cap and cape, taking his lonely 
walk; but when, as Juniors, we went up to his recitation room to read the Alcestis, the 
Seven against Thebes, and the Antigone, in what was to most of us the last opportunity to 
read these wonderful works in the original as literature, as inspiration, we could not be too 
grateful to him for letting us alone, not tripping us up at each sentence with fine points 
of grammar. If we had not learned them in three years' drill in school, and two thus far in 
college, we never should. There he sat, an Olympian Zeus. The smallness of his stature 
was hidden by the desk, but the splendid iron-gray head and beard, the dark eyes, deep- 
set under heavy brows, and above adequate shoulders, almost seemed a presence come 
from Thebes or Athens with thoughts beyond "fi»' with the optative." 



290 'The Saturday Club 

Lowell three nephews, or Mr. Appleton his half-brother, march 
or ride past, as the Twentieth Massachusetts Infantry, the First, 
also the Second Cavalry, the Forty-eighth Infantry, or the Fifth 
Light Battery passed. Two of these sons, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
Jr., and Samuel Hoar, and two of Mr. Forbes's grandsons (sons 
of Colonel William H. Forbes) later became members of the Club. 
Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (his father did not become a member 
of the Club until 1870), was Captain in the First Massachusetts 
Cavalry, later. Colonel of the Fifth. The two younger sons of 
Henry James ^ (chosen a member the following year) enlisted in 
this year, and in 1863 were officers respectively in the Fifty-fourth 
and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Regiments (coloured): — 

Ah ! many a soldier in those ranks 

How few months since was deemed a boy. 

Of later members — not hereditary so to speak — Charles R. 
Codman was Colonel of the Forty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry; 
Francis A. Walker was Assistant Adjutant-General on the staff 
of the successive commanders of the Second Army Corps, Sum- 
ner, Couch, and Hancock; Henry L. Higginson was Major, and 
Henry P. Bowditch Captain, in the First Massachusetts Cavalry, 
the latter afterward Major in the Fifth; Theodore Lyman was 
invited by General Meade commanding the Army of the Potomac 
to serve on his staff with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and 
did excellent service; John C. Gray served, first, as A.D.C. to 
General Gordon, later as Major and Judge-Advocate on the staffs 
of Generals Foster and Gilmore; Edward W. Hooper as Captain 
and A.D.C. on the staffs of Generals Saxton and Dix; Charles 
S. Sargent on the staffs of Generals Banks and Hurlburt, and 
finally with the rank of Captain on that of General Granger. 

The Saturday Club cannot claim to have sent William Thomas 
Sampson into the Navy as its representative, but after another 
war they welcomed the victorious Admiral as a member — unhap- 
pily to die all too soon. 

It must be borne in mind that our good and great War-Gover- 
nor, John Albion Andrew, was ex officio Commander-in-Chief of 

* Garth Wilkinson James and Robertson James. 



i862 291 

the Massachusetts troops. With forethought, wisdom, and force, 
he raised, reenforced, and provided for them, nor did he forget 
them when they passed under the United States' command. In 
this service he spent for this country in a few years the strength 
that should have carried him to old age. 

Mr. Emerson had evidently been reading Dr. Holmes's "My 
Hunt after 'The Captain '" in the Atlantic Monthly when he wrote 
in his journal: "What a convivial talent is that of Wendell Holmes ! 
He is still at his Club, when he travels in search of his wounded 
son; has the same delight in his perceptions, in his wit, in its effect, 
which he watches as a belle the effect of her beauty; would still 
hold each companion fast by his sprightly, sparkling, widely-allu- 
sive talk, as at the Club table; tastes all his own talent, calculates 
every stroke, and yet the fountain is unfailing, the wit excellent, 
the savotr vivre and savoir parler admirable." 

Yet Holmes was very human in his affections and stirred to the 
depths by his Country's cause and needs, and the way the best 
youth of the North had risen and were to rise to the occasion. 
These lines from his poem at the annual Harvard holiday show 
his feelings : — 

" * Old classmate, say, 

Do you remember our Commencement day? 
Were we such boys as these at twenty?' Nay. 
God called them to a nobler task than ours, 
And gave them holier thoughts and manlier powers. 
These 'boys' we talk about like ancient sages 
Are the same men we read of in old pages, 
The bronze recast of dead heroic ages." 

But now came the mortality list of the bloody battles of the 
Seven Days in the Peninsula, in General McClellan's change of 
base, followed by his temporary deposition, and in Pope's defeat 
at the Second Bull Run. The Country was alarmed; volunteering 
was slow. Dr. Holmes came to the rescue with his "Never or 
Now," an appeal which surely stirred the blood and sent to the 
ranks at all risks many a generous boy. 

"Listen, young heroes! your Country is calling! 
Time strikes the hour for the brave and the true! 



292 The Saturday Club 

Now, while the foremost are fighting and falling, 
Fill up the ranks that have opened for you ! 

" You whom the fathers made free and defended, 
Stain not the scroll that emblazons their fame! 
You whose fair heritage spotless descended. 
Leave not your children a birthright of shame! 

"Stay not for questions while Freedom stands gasping! 
Wait not till Honour lies wrapped in his pall! 
Brief the lips' meeting be, swift the hands' clasping, — 
'Off for the wars!' is enough for them all. 

"Break from the arms that would fondly caress you! 
Hark! 't is the bugle-blast, sabres are drawn! 
Mothers shall pray for you, fathers shall bless you, 
Maidens shall weep for you when you are gone! 

"Never or now! cries the blood of a nation, 

Poured on the turf where the red rose should bloom; 
Now is the day and the hour of salvation, — 
Never or now! peals the trumpet of doom! 

"Never or now! roars the hoarse throated cannon 
Through the black canopy blotting the skies; 
Never or now! flaps the shell-blasted pennon 
O'er the deep ooze where the Cumberland lies! 

" From the foul dens where our brothers are dying, 
Aliens and foes in the land of their birth, — 
From the rank swamps where our martyrs are lying 
Pleading in vain for a handful of earth, — 

" From the hot plains where they perish outnumbered. 
Furrowed and ridged by the battle-field's plough. 
Comes the loud summons: Too long you have slumbered, 
Hear the last Angel-trump, — Never or now!" 

The capture of the highly important harbour of Port Royal 
had caused a flight of the planters on the Sea Islands. Their slaves 
for the most part remained. Agents were sent by the Govern- 
ment to take possession of the valuable cotton crop, and to see 
to the planting of a new one. At the same time an Educational 
Commission was formed by Mr. Edward Atkinson to protect and 
improve the helpless black population, Edward L. Pierce of 



i862 293 

Milton at the head of it, and Mr. Forbes interested and helpful. 
Among the young men and women in this missionary work, which 
was then unpopular, was our member Edward W. Hooper, whose 
quiet force and ability caused him to be placed by General Rufus 
Saxton on his staff with rank of Captain. The increasing difficulty 
of recruiting at the North, the multitude of unemployed black 
men within our lines, and the importance to the South, in working 
to feed their armies, of those who stayed on the plantations, all 
pointed to the obvious measure of raising negro regiments, a meas- 
ure about which the Government was timid. In Mr. Forbes's 
journal he wrote: "In that summer I had the satisfaction of getting 
up the Committee of a Hundred for promoting the use of blacks 
as soldiers. . . . We raised, I think, about $100,000 by subscrip- 
tion among the most conservative Republicans. The first two 
Massachusetts regiments of coloured troops were in course of 
formation. . . ." With a view of weakening and alarming the 
enemy, recruiting offices were opened near the Border, to attract 
slaves and freedmen, by the patriotic George L. Stearns, of Med- 
ford, commissioned Major for this purpose by Governor Andrew. 
Such measures prepared public opinion for the Emancipation, 
which, on the 23d of September, Lincoln proclaimed, to take effect 
with the opening year. Now one reads a little sadly this letter, 
written on that day by Norton to George William Curtis, when 
we consider the present condition of the coloured race, and the 
attitude of so many of our people towards them. Norton wrote : — 

"God be praised! I can hardly see to write — for when I think 
of this great act of Freedom, and all it implies, my heart and my 
eyes overflow with the deepest, most serious gratitude. ... I think 
to-day that the world is glorified by the spirit of Christ. How 
beautiful It Is to be able to read the sacred words under this new 
light: 'He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach de- 
liverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set 
at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of 
the Lord.' The war Is paid for." 

Brownell, the war-poet of whose introduction to the Club by 
Holmes the next year's story tells, voiced the eager hope that tens 
of thousands of our Northern people, not yet free from anxiety 



2 94 The Saturday Club 

as to the President's action, were feeling. I quote some verses 
from his appealing poem: — 

"Men may march and manoeuvre 
And camp on fields of death — 
The Iron Saurians wheel and dart, 
And thunder their fiery breath — 

"But one brave word is wanting. 
The word whose tone should start 
The pulses of men to flamelets. 
Thrilling through every heart. 

"O Father, trust thy children; — 
If ever you found them fail 
*T was but for the lack of the one just word 
Which must in the end prevail. 

*' Is it yet forgotten of Shiloh 

And the long outnumbered lines. 

How the blue frocks lay in winrows? 

How they died at Seven Pines? 

" How they sank in the Varuna 
(Seven foes in flame around!) 
How they went down in the Cumberland 
Firing, cheering as they drowned? 



"And never fear but the living 

Shall stand, to the last, by thee — 
They shall yet make up a million. 
And another, if need there be! 

" But fail not, as thy trust is Heaven, 
To breathe the word shall wake 
The holiest fire of a Nation's heart — 
Speak it, for Christ's dear sake!" 



In the sketch of Mr. Norton an account has been given of a 
wonderfully successful enterprise conducted by him and Professor 
James B. Thayer in influencing healthy public opinion through- 
out the land, the Loyal Publication Society. Mr. Forbes was the 
prime mover. 

In this year patriotic and liberal measures like these were 



i862 295 

greatly forwarded by the Union Club. Up to this time the only 
important club in Boston of solid and well-to-do Bostonians had 
been the Somerset, but its tone was of patrician conservatism, 
only slowly moved by the rapid march of events and the corre- 
sponding needs of the Country; yet the fathers were being edu- 
cated by their sons at the front. Many of our members were active 
in establishing the Union Club, like Mr. Ward, Mr. Brimmer, 
Mr. Woodman, Mr. Norton, and Dr. S. G. Howe. But the 
emancipation from the old pro-slavery "Hunkerism" of Boston 
was most cheering. Earlier in the year Longfellow had written 
to Sumner: "You are hard at work, and God bless you in it! In 
every country the 'dangerous classes' are those who do no work; 
for instance, the nobility in Europe, and the slave-holders here. 
It is evident that the world needs a new nobility — not of the 
gold medal and sangre azul order; not of the blood that is blue 
because it stagnates; but of the red arterial blood that circulates, 
and has heart in it, and life, and labour." 

Dr. Samuel G. Howe, who, in the previous year, had personally 
urged the President to proclaim Emancipation as an act of jus- 
tice and policy, and formed an association here to promote the 
movement, among whom our later members Edmund Quincy 
and James Freeman Clarke were numbered, had foreseen the 
next step. From Washington he wrote to Francis W. Bird: "It 
seems to me that what we want now is a knowledge of the actual 
condition of the freedmen. We must be able to present in Decem- 
ber ... a general and reliable coup cToeil of those who are actually 
out of the house of bondage, their wants, and their capacities. . . . 
I will do what I can here, . . . and should like to join you and 
give personal attention to their condition at Fortress Monroe and 
elsewhere. Meantime do something immediately and earnestly to 
stir up our Emancipation League." 

More and more the Country came to feel that the war was not 
against Secession, but for human rights and democracy against 
slavery and oligarchy. Our quiet, but eager and brave Quaker 
Whittier celebrated in his "At Port Royal" the blessing to the 
slaves that its capture by our guns had brought. Holmes wrote 
his hymn with the tramp of armies in it, beginning, — 



296 'The Saturday Club 

" Flag of the heroes who left us their glory- 
Borne through the battlefields' thunder and flame." 

McClellan's sharp check to Lee's invasion of the North at 
Antietam cheered our people, and, in spite of the heavy losses, 
they were proud of the steady valour that our soldiers showed. 
Even the wasteful slaughter at Fredericksburg at the close of the 
year had this consoling element. 

Again I yield to the temptation to quote from Brownell's Som- 
nia Cceli, written just after that sacrifice of our young heroes: — 

" Come, battle of stormiest breath 
O'er meadow and hillside brown, 
The long lines sweeping up to death 
Mid thunder from trench and town — 



"Ah! never in vain, our brothers, 
That dark December day 
For the Truth, and for hope to others, 
By slope and by trench ye lay. 

"Did we deem 't was woe and pity 
That there in your flower ye died? 
Ah, fond! — the Celestial City 
Her portal fair flung wide. 

"The colours ye bore in vain that day 
Yet wave o'er Heaven's recruits — 
And are trooped by Aidenn's starriest Gate 
While the Flaming Sword salutes." 

And yet our people had to wait through a dreary winter and 
endure another serious defeat in spring, before the tide of the mili- 
tant Confederacy reached its far northern limit, and was turned 
at Gettysburg. 



CHARLES SUMNER 

No adequate sketch of Charles Sumner's public career could be 
compressed within the limits allotted to a single memoir in this 
volume, and for this the reader must be referred to his biographies 
which are easily accessible. It is enough here briefly to recapitu- 
late a few salient facts. 

He was born at Boston in 1811 and died at Washington in 
1874. His first contribution to the discussion of public questions 
was on July 4, 1845, when he delivered his oration on "The True 
Grandeur of Nations." He took no active part in politics or in 
anti-slavery agitation until he was roused by the annexation of 
Texas. His first political speech was made at the Whig Conven- 
tion in Massachusetts on September 23, 1846, and he was elected 
to the Senate of the United States in April, 1851. He was as- 
saulted by Preston S. Brooks on May 22, 1856, and from that 
time was an invalid spending most of his time in Europe where he 
underwent very severe treatment, and taking no active part in 
the proceedings of the Senate until June 4, i860, when he de- 
livered his great speech entitled "The Barbarism of Slavery." 
From then until General Grant became President in 1869 he was 
the recognized leader of the Senate on all questions of foreign re- 
lations and in the contest against Slavery In all Its aspects. The 
course of the President in urging the annexation of San Domingo 
brought him into opposition, and he was removed from his posi- 
tion as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations 
in March, 1871. The struggle over the San Domingo question was 
very bitter, and this, with the consequent alienation from party 
leaders and former friends, subjected him to a severe strain which 
resulted in an attack of angina pectoris, and from that time, 
though he continued at work with brief intervals until the last, 
he was in fact an invalid until his death in March, 1874. 

This bare outline of a great life is interesting If only because it 
shows in how few years his work was done. Until he was thirty- 
fi,ve years old the evils of Slavery never roused him to oppose it. 



298 "The Saturday Club 

He was forty years old when he entered the Senate, and of the 
twenty-three years which elapsed from then until his death he was 
disabled for a third of the time. What he did for his country was 
done in sixteen years, during six of which he was one of a small 
minority, and as he never held executive office, his results were 
accomplished only by speech and vote. 

His connection with the Saturday Club began with his election 
in 1862, and as its meetings were suspended during the summer 
months, and he was as a rule in Washington during the rest of the 
year, he cannot have been present regularly at its dinners. Mr. 
Pierce in his very full biography chronicles Sumner's election to 
the Club, and mentions his dining with it as a guest on April 27, 
i860, and as a member at various times when in Boston during 
the recesses of Congress in 1864, 1865, and in 1873, but except 
that Mr. Chase was a guest of the Club in 1864, and William W. 
Story was at a dinner in 1865, he tells us nothing of interest. 
From Sumner's voluminous correspondence no reference to the 
Club is preserved, but in a letter from Professor Agassiz, written 
on December 20, 1863, we find: "Longfellow promised to come 
back to the Club next Saturday. I wish you were with us; we 
shall drink your health. Answer in thought when you go to your 
dinner that day, the 26th of December"; and Emerson recorded 
in his diary, early in the Civil War, after a Club dinner, "Sumner 
was there. He is beginning to feel his oats." 

This is a slight contribution to the history of the Club, but it 
seems an appropriate opportunity to deal with a side of Sumner's 
nature which has often been misrepresented. One orator has said, 
"His manners were applauded as perfect in most of the drawing- 
rooms of Europe, yet in Washington he can scarcely be said to 
have exhibited a democratic, or even a genial nature"; and, "His 
lack of even the usual little courtesies to the other sex was a by- 
word among his friends"; while a historian whom we all admire 
has summed up his social side briefly by saying, "He was vain, 
conceited, fond of flattery, overbearing in manner, and he wore a 
constant air of superiority." 

One may be permitted to suspect that none of these critics had 
any personal acquaintance with their victim, but derived their 



Charles Sumner 299 

impressions from Sumner's political or personal opponents rather 
than from those who knew him well. European standards are 
much misrepresented if a gentleman's manners are regarded as 
perfect in foreign drawing-rooms when they "lack even the usual 
little courtesies" to ladies, nor could Sumner have been welcome 
to the Saturday Club if his bearing towards his fellow-men had 
been what the historian describes. The real facts may be stated 
briefly and there is an abundance of testimony to support the 
statement. 

Sumner was by nature essentially simple, sincere, affectionate, 
and kindly, and in the words of a classmate he was possessed by 
a " life-and-death earnestness." Whatever he did, he did with his 
might. He was ambitious at first to acquire knowledge, and he thus 
described his plan of life in the Law School: "Six hours, namely, 
the forenoon, wholly and solely to law; afternoon to classics; 
evening to history, subjects collateral and assistant to law, etc. 
. . . Recreation must not be found in idleness or loose reading." 
He believed that " a lawyer must know everything," and he read 
early and late until his inflamed eyes and his complexion showed 
the effects of excessive labour. At this time he was constantly at 
the house of Judge Story, whose son, our member, William Wet- 
more Story, wrote of him: "His simplicity and directness of char- 
acter, his enthusiasm and craving for information, his lively spirit 
and genial feeling, immediately made a strong impression on me. 
. . . He was free, natural, and naive in his simplicity, and plied 
my father with an ever-flowing stream of questions, and I need 
not say that the responses were as full and genial as heart and 
mind could desire. . . . He was at this time totally without vanity, 
and only desirous to acquire knowledge and information on every 
subject. . . ." 

President Quincy's daughter, Mrs. Waterston, said of him: 
"This youth, though not in the least handsome, is so good- 
hearted, clever, and real, that it is impossible not to like him and 
believe in him." The daughter of Mr. Peters, the reporter of the 
Supreme Court, said of him, after meeting him in Philadelphia 
where he was visiting: "He was then a great, tall, lank creature, 
quite heedless of the form and fashion of his garb; 'unsophisti- 



300 The Saturday Club 

cated,' everybody said, and oblivious to the propriety of wearing 
a hat in a city, going about in a rather shabby fur cap: but the 
fastidiousness of fashionable ladies was utterly routed by the 
wonderful charm of his conversation, and he was carried about 
triumphantly and introduced to all the distinguished people, 
young and old, who then made Philadelphia society so brilliant. 
No amount of honeying, however, could then affect him. His sim- 
plicity, his perfect naturalness was what struck every one, com- 
bined with his rare culture and his delicious youthful enthusiasm. 
. . . There was a sweetness and tenderness of character about 
him, and an entire unworldliness, that won all hearts." A witness 
of the opposite sex describes him at this time as "modest and 
deferential." 

When he was about twenty-seven years old he went abroad and 
stayed there for more than two years, during which time he saw 
in France, in Germany, in Italy, and in England almost everybody 
that was then worth knowing. While he carried letters, he rarely 
presented them, saying in a letter to Judge Story, "Since I have 
been here I have followed a rigid rule with regard to my conduct: 
I have not asked an introduction to any person; not a single ticket, 
privilege, or anything of the kind from any one; I have not called 
upon anybody (with one exception) until I had been first called 
upon or invited." 

Mr. Abraham Hayward at that time spoke of his "entire ab- 
sence of pretension," and added: "Sumner's social success at 
this early period, before his reputation was established, was most 
remarkable. He was welcome guest at most of the best houses 
both in town and country, and the impression he uniformly left 
was that of an amiable, sensible, high-minded, well-informed gen- 
tleman." 

Lady Wharncliffe said: "I never knew an American who had 
the degree of social success he had; owing I think to the real 
elevation and worth of his character, his genuine nobleness of 
thought and aspiration, his kindliness of heart, his absence of 
dogmatism and oratorical display, his genuine amiability, his 
cultivation of mind, and his appreciation of England without 
anything approaching to flattery of ourselves or depreciation of 



Charles Sumner 301 

his own country." Mrs. Parks, granddaughter of Dr. Priestley, 
wrote In 1876: "It was said, after Mr. Sumner's northern journey, 
that he made the acquaintance of all the principal Whig families 
on the way north and of the Tories on his return. He was enor- 
mously popular, almost like a meteor passing through the coun- 
try, young, agreeable, full of information, he entertained every 
one. He bore the ovation well and modestly." Pierce in his bio- 
graphy devotes some three hundred pages to Sumner's European 
experiences which abundantly confirm the opinion of these wit- 
nesses. 

A man is known by the company he keeps, and Sumner's inti- 
mate friends in Boston, Longfellow, Felton, Hillard, and Cleve- 
land, who with him formed "the Five of Clubs," Dr. Samuel G. 
Howe, and many others who might be named, were (all but Fel- 
ton, and perhaps Hillard, who fell away during the anti-slavery 
agitation) warm and intimate friends of Sumner during their 
lives, and it is certain that they would not have taken to their 
hearts a man such as Sumner is said to have been In the passages 
that have been quoted. It Is interesting to note the contemporary 
testimony as to his Phi Beta Kappa Oration, delivered In August, 
1846, entitled "The Scholar, the Jurist, the Artist, the Philan- 
thropist," which was In fact a tribute to John Pickering, Judge 
Story, Washington Allston, and William Ellery Channlng. To us 
of modern taste It seems somewhat grandiloquent and turgid, 
but Edward Everett said of It: "It was an amazingly splendid 
affair. I never heard it surpassed. I don't know that I ever heard 
it equalled"; while Mr. Emerson wrote in his diary on the evening 
of the day, "At Phi Beta Kappa, Sumner's oration was marked 
by a certain magnificence which I do not well know how to paral- 
lel." This testimony certainly comes from the most competent 
judges. George Hoar, then graduating, said: "Sumner held and 
delighted his hearers to the close," though he spoke "nearly or 
quite three hours. His magnificent person was In the prime of Its 
beauty. His deep voice had not then the huskiness which It had 
in later years"; to which may be added the testimony of a lady: 
"He seemed to me a new Demosthenes or Cicero, even like a 
Grecian god, as he stood on the platform. I thought him the 



302 T^he Saturday Club 

handsomest and the finest-looking man I had ever seen." Such 
he was when he entered pubHc life, already much changed from 
the youth of the shabby fur cap, a welcome guest everywhere, and 
flattered by every one. 

From this time until he was elected to the Senate he was en- 
gaged in a bitter contest against the aggression of Slavery, the 
annexation of Texas, and the Mexican War, into which he threw 
himself with all his might. When he entered the Senate he came 
as the representative of a great and unpopular cause already dis- 
liked by many former friends in Massachusetts. His course there 
roused bitter hostility, his friends at home fell away from him, 
his colleagues in the Senate insulted him, and this undoubtedly 
caused him very acute suffering, but it never affected his action 
in the least. It none the less must have added intensity to his 
earnestness and have coloured his whole life. A man of impressive 
figure and marked personal beauty, of cultivated taste in literature 
and art, wrapped up in the work of his life and intensely earnest, 
from his very nature he must have been out of sympathy with the 
politicians who haunt the cloak-rooms and lobbies of Washington 
and engage in the conversation which there prevails. Sumner did 
not smoke, and he kept his seat in the Senate, watching con- 
stantly all that went on. As has been frequently pointed out, his 
sense of humour was not acute, and he naturally impressed, to their 
annoyance, many of his associates as their superior, not because 
he affected any air of superiority, but because he was in fact 
superior in taste, in purpose, in his whole atmosphere. 

I may add a word of personal testimony, for I lived in his house 
for two years. I sat in his library and saw him receive men of every 
rank, race, and colour. I was myself young and at the time sen- 
sitive to any affectation of superiority, and I was struck with the 
gracious courtesy with which Mr. Sumner uniformly received his 
numerous visitors. He was no respecter of persons, but his man- 
ners were natural and kind. Senator Conkling, though I saw him 
only as a young man sees a Senator, used to irritate me daily by 
the way in which he treated, not me, but his colleagues in the 
Senate. There was about him an assumption which was most 
insulting, but nothing of the sort characterized Mr. Sumner. 



Charles Sumner 303 

Can there be better evidence than the testimony of an English 
visitor who said, "He is a man to whom all children come." 

There is a tradition at the Club that he was dominant in con- 
versation. It is perhaps natural that, being at the centre of affairs 
and familiar with all that was happening at the greatest crisis in 
this country's history, he should have believed that what he had 
to tell the Club would interest them, and that he was inclined to 
talk and perhaps interrupt others in order to secure attention to 
what he considered valuable, but it must be borne in mind also 
that there were other members of the Club who liked to enlighten 
their fellow-members, and who perhaps did not enjoy active com- 
petition. Even the story-teller at a dinner-party wants to have 
the whole company listen. But at his own table, where he enter- 
tained constantly, he did not dominate, but was a courteous and 
gracious host. He was in essence a gentleman, he was used to the 
society of ladies, and from some familiarity with his friends of all 
sorts I can say with confidence that it was not and could not have 
been a byword among them that he in any way lacked courtesy 
to ladies. T am glad to bear this testimony, which comes from such 
an intimate acquaintance as a young man acquires with an older 
one in whose daily society he lived for nearly two years, whom he 
saw in the privacy of his library, in the Senate, as a host in his own 
house, and in almost every relation of life with men and women. 

I recall too many instances of his kindly thought for myself and 
others not to feel that his essential nature has been much misrep- 
resented. His lack of humour doubtless helped to impair his 
perspective and his sense of relative value. His intense earnest- 
ness led him to exaggerate the importance of happenings which 
interested him. To like flattery is, like every other taste for sweets, 
common to us all, but deleterious if over-indulged. It is recorded 
of another very eminent member of the Club that by his own con- 
fession he liked his praise administered, when he was young, with 
a teaspoon, in middle life with a tablespoon, and in his later years 
with a ladle. We may not lik:e to be flattered too openly, but who 
will dare to say that praise from Sir Hubert Stanley, or even less 
eminent critics, administered judiciously, is not most grateful, no 
matter how large the dose in which it is given. Mr. Sumner liked 



304 'The Saturday Club 

praise and doubtless felt that he deserved it. This foible is after all 
"the last infirmity of noble minds." 

It remains to add the testimony of friends, and Sumner's were 
the best in the community. Dr. S. G. Howe, brave and unselfish 
as man can be, whose life was one long blessing to humanity, was 
devoted to him. Richard H. Dana quotes him thus, "He thinks 
Sumner has suflfered as much as a man can suffer, and has been 
forbearing and generous." When he left his house in Hancock 
Street he said to Longfellow, "I have buried from this house my 
father, my mother, a brother, and a sister, and now I am leaving 
it, the deadest of them all." 

In telling of her father's friendship. Dr. Howe's daughter, Mrs. 
Richards, writes: "The relation between him and Sumner was a 
peculiarly close and tender one. 'Charlie' was his brother, his 
alter ego: to him he poured out his inmost thoughts. Where others 
saw the grave statesman, weighty, self-contained, and — one must 
add — self-conceited, he saw a creature of light, a poet, a being 
all beauty and nobility. Yet he never faltered in his duty, when 
it called him to smite the friend of his heart. In fact, the two 
hammered at each other, always lovingly, but sometimes deal- 
ing tremendous blows. When Sumner and Felton quarrelled, it 
was Dr. Howe who tried to heal the breach between them; I think 
he finally succeeded, in a measure at least. The letters which I hope 
to send will tell of this. He was always a peacemaker, though 
himself such a 'bonny fighter.'" 

From Judge Hoar's letter to Mr. Emerson written just after 
Sumner's death comes the following: — 

Washington, March 11, 1874. 
My dear Mr. Emerson: — 

Sumner is dead, as the telegraph will have told you before you 
receive this. He died at thirteen minutes before three this after- 
noon. I held his hand when he died; and was the only one of his 
near friends who was in the room. 

His last words (except to say "Sit down" to Mr. Hooper, who 
came to his bedside, but had gone out before his death) were 
these: "Judge, tell Emerson how much I love and revere him." 



Charles Sumner 305 

I replied, "He said of you once that he never knew so white a 
soul " 

Mr. Emerson, being asked for some lines that would be ap- 
propriate to be read or printed with regard to Senator Sumner, 
took these from his poem in memory of his own brother Edward 
Bliss Emerson: — 

"All inborn power that could 
Consist with homage to the good 
Flamed from his martial eye; 
Fronting foes of God and man, 
Frowning down the evil doer. 
Battling for the weak and poor. 
His from youth the leader's look 
Gave the law which others took, 
And never poor beseeching glance 
Shamed that sculptured countenance." 

Emerson himself in his diary wrote: — 

"It characterizes a man for me that he hates Charles Sumner: 
for it shows that he cannot discriminate between a foible and a 
vice. Sumner's moral instinct and character are so exceptionally 
pure that he must have perpetual magnetism for honest men; his 
ability and working energy such, that every good friend of the 
Republic must stand by him. Those who come near him and 
are offended by his egotism, or his foible (if you please) of using 
classic quotations, or other bad taste, easily forgive these whims, if 
themselves are good; or magnify them into disgust, if thej'- them- 
selves are incapable of his virtue. And when he read, one night in 
Concord, a lecture on Lafayette, we felt that of all Americans he 
was best entitled by his own character and fortunes to read that 
eulogy. 

"Every Pericles must have his Creon; Sumner had his adver- 
saries, his wasps and backbiters. We almost wished that he had 
not stooped to answer them. But he condescended to give them 
truth and patriotism, without asking whether they could appre- 
ciate the instruction or not. 

"A man of such truth that he can be truly described; he needs 
no exaggerated praise." 



3o6 "The Saturday Club 

Henry James, the younger, contributes some reminiscences 
which should find a place here. Speaking of the Brooks assault 
he says: — 

"The impression of the event, which was like a welt raised by 
the lash itself across the face of the North, is one that memory has 
kept, for this careful chronicler, even though the years of a life have 
overlaid it. I recollect, from far away, . . . the reverberation in 
parental breasts, in talk, passion, prophecy, in the very aspect of 
promptly-arriving compatriots, of the news which may be thought 
of to-day, through the perspective of history, as making the famous 
first cannon-sound at Fort Sumter but the second shot of the War. 
To very young minds inflamed by the comparatively recent pe- 
rusal of Uncle Tom's Cabin, it was as if war had quite grandly be- 
gun, for what was war but fighting, and what but fighting had fof 
its sign great men lying prone in their blood.'* These wonder- 
ments, moreover, were to have a sequel — the appearance of the 
great man, after an interval in Paris and under the parental roof, 
with the violence of the scene, to one's vivid sense, still about him 
(though with wounds by that time rather disappointingly healed), 
and with greatness, enough, visible, measurable, unmistakable 
greatness, to fill out any picture. His stature, his head, his face, 
his tone — well do I remember how they fitted one's very earliest 
apprehension, perhaps, of 'type,' one's young conception of the 
statesman and the patriot. They were as interesting and impres- 
sive as if they had been a costume or a uniform." 

Longfellow loved him as a brother, and in 1851 wrote in his 
diary: "A Sunday without a Sumner is an odd thing — Domeu' 
ica senza domine — but to-day we have had one"; and when 
Sumner was beaten by Brooks he wrote an affectionate and 
indignant letter at once, and again on May 28, — "I have just 
been reading again your speech. It is the greatest voice, on the 
greatest subject, that has been uttered since we became a nation. 
No matter for insults — we feel them with you; no matter for 
wounds — we also bleed in them! You have torn the mask off the 
faces of traitors; and at last the spirit of the North is aroused." ^ 

Charles F. Adams, the younger, in ^his autobiography says: 

* See Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, by Samuel Longfellow, vol. 11. 



Charles Sumner 307 

" In those days we saw a great deal of Mr. Sumner, and I felt for 
him an admiration closely verging on affection. He was very 
kind and considerate to us children, taking a deep interest in us, 
and being very companionable. He was at that time thirty-seven, 
and certainly a most striking and attractive personality. The world 
was all before him, he was kindly, earnest, enthusiastic and very 
genial. A constant guest at my father's house, he exercised a 
great influence over me, and one very elevating. To him as he 
was at that period and later I feel under deep obligation." 

Speaking of his course at Harvard he continues: "No instructor 
produced or endeavoured to produce the slightest impression on 
me; no spark of enthusiasm was sought to be infused into me. In 
that line I owed far more to Charles Sumner than to all of the 
Harvard professors put together." 

He said in 1 860-61 of the Senate: "As one looked down from 
the gallery, the only man I remember whose face and bearing, 
whose figure and the air of large refinement about him seemed to 
me impressive was Mr. Sumner. He certainly always offered a 
notable exception to the prevailing commonplace and coarseness 
of fibre, both mental and physical." 

The following passage from Judge Hoar's tribute after his death 
was well merited and was absolutely true: "Wherever the news of 
this event spreads through this broad land, not only in this city 
among his associates in the public councils, not only in the old 
Commonwealth of which he was the pride and the ornament, 
but in many quiet homes, in many a cabin of the poor and lowly 
there is to-day inexpressible tenderness and profound sorrow." 

Nothing can more fitly conclude this notice than Whittier's 
ode 

TO CHARLES SUMNER 

If I have seemed more prompt to censure wrong 
Than praise the right; if seldom to thine ear 
My voice hath mingled with the exultant cheer 

Borne upon all our Northern winds along; 

If I have failed to join the fickle throng 

In wide-eyed wonder, that thou standest strong 

In victory, surprised in thee to find 

Brougham's scathing power with Canning's grace combined: 



3oS 'The Saturday Club 

Thou knowest my heart, dear friend, and well canst guess 
That, even though silent, I have not the less 
Rejoiced to see thy actual life agree 
With the large future which I shaped for thee, 
When, years ago, beside the summer sea. 
White in the moon, we saw the long waves fall 
Baffled and broken from the rocky wall. 
That, to the menace of the brawling flood, 
Opposed alone its massive quietude. 
Calm as a fate; with not a leaf nor vine 
Nor birch-spray trembling in the still moonshine, 
Crowning it like God's peace. I sometimes think 
That night-scene by the sea prophetical 
(For Nature speaks in symbols and in signs. 
And through her pictures human fate divines), 
That rock, wherefrom we saw the billows sink 
In murmuring rout, uprising clear and tall 
In the white light of heaven, the type of one 
Who, momently by Error's host assailed, 
Stands strong as Truth, in greaves of granite mailed; 
And, tranquil-fronted, listening over all 
The tumult, hears the angels say, "Well done!" 

M.S. 



Chapter X 

1863 

We sung the mass of lances from morn till eve. 

Welsh Bard 

THE dawn of the New Year was brightened by the Eman- 
cipation. Longfellow at evening wrote in his journal: "A 
beautiful day, full of sunshine, ending in a tranquil moonlight. 
May it be symbolical!" 

On that evening, at the Boston Music Hall, crowded with eager 
and happy people, white and black, a Jubilee Concert was held. 
Mr. George Willis Cooke tells of Mr. Dwight's zeal and success in 
carrying out the plan. Noble music from Beethoven, Mendelssohn, 
Handel, and Rossini was included in the programme and some 
of the best singers and musicians in Boston joined their gifts to 
make it an inspiring occasion. Emerson had written the poem 
which he was asked to read at the opening : ^ — 

The word of the Lord by night 
To the watching Pilgrims came, 
As they sat by the seaside. 
And filled their hearts with flame. 

God said, I am tired of kings, 
I suffer them no more; 
Up to my ear the morning brings 
The outrage of the poor. 



My angel, — his name is Freedom, — 
Choose him to be your king; 
He shall cut pathways east and west 
And fend you with his wing. 

Lo! I uncover the land 
Which I hid of old time in the West, 
As a sculptor uncovers the statue 
When he has wrought his best. 

* Afterwards published as the "Boston Hymn." 



3 1 o "The Saturday Club 

> I show Columbia of the rocks 
Which dip their foot in the seas 
And soar to the air-borne flocks 
Of clouds and the boreal fleece. 

I will divide my goods; 
Call in the wretch and the slave: 
None shall rule but the humble, 
And none but Toil shall have. 



I break your bonds and masterships, 
And I unchain the slave: 
Free be his heart and hand henceforth 
As wind and wandering wave. 

I cause from every creature 
His proper good to flow; 
So much as he is and doeth. 
So much he shall bestow. 

But, laying hands on another 
To coin his labour and sweat. 
He goes in pawn to his victim 
For eternal years in debt. 

To-day unbind the captive, 
So only are ye unbound; 
Lift up a people from the dust. 
Trump of their rescue, sound! 

Pay ransom to the owner, 

And fill the bag to the brim. 

Who is the owner? The slave is owner. 

And ever was. Pay him. 



Up! and the dusky race 
That sat in darkness long, — 
Be swift their feet as antelopes. 
And as behemoth strong. 

Come, East and West and North, 
By races, as snow-flakes. 
And carry my purpose forth, 
Which neither halts nor shakes. 



i863 



3" 



My will fulfilled shall be, 
For, in daylight or in dark, 
My thunderbolt has eyes to see 
His way home to the mark. 

Also Dr. Holmes's "Army Hymn" was sung by solo and chorus. 

An important patriotic movement was at this time happily 
made. Colonel Charles R. Lowell wrote, early in the spring, to 
Major Henry L. Higginson from camp at Readville, where he was 
raising the Second Massachusetts Cavalry: "I think public opin- 
ion here is getting stouter; more eflForts are making to educate 
the great unthinking; good editorials are reprinted and circulated 
gratis. A club is now forming in Boston, a Union Club, to support 
the Government, irrespective of party, started by Ward, Forbes, 
Norton, Amos Lawrence, &c., &c. This seems to me a very prom- 
ising scheme. Clubs have, in all trying times, been great levers 
for moving events along." In Thomas G. Appleton's notebook I 
find: "The Union Club, organized February 4, 1863, first occu- 
pied its present quarters, the former residence of Abbott Law- 
rence, October 15, 1863, the conditions of membership being 
* unqualified loyalty to the Constitution and Union of the United 
States, and unwavering support of the Federal Government in its 
efforts for the suppression of the Rebellion.'" Its promoters were 
Samuel G. Ward, the first treasurer; Charles W. Storey, the first 
secretary; William Gray, Martin Brimmer, Charles G. Loring, 
Francis Edward Parker, and others, and its object was "the 
encouragement and dissemination of patriotic sentiment and 
opinion." 

Hon. Edward Everett was the first president, and Norton writes 
to George W.Curtis: "Our Union Club promises well; two hun- 
dred members already, and Mr. Everett and his followers pledged 
to principles which suit you and me." Forbes's letter to a patriotic 
correspondent In New York shows the need that was felt of coun- 
teracting Boston's indifferent or pro-slavery club influences. He 
wrote: "I am very glad to find that the doings of your Delmonico 
Copperhead Conclave have stirred New York up to the impor- 
tance of spreading light in the dark places. . . . The fact Is, 'Club 
Men' who live by wine, cards, tobacco, and billiards for their 



312 The Saturday Club 

cheap stimulants and time-killers, gravitate very strongly towards 
Secesh sympathies. They are apt to think themselves aristocratic 
and gentleman-like and they look up to the idle slave-owners with 
respect, as being more permanently idle than themselves; at 
least it is so here. Hence, the public opinion influenced by our 
clubs is generally unsound and there is great need of a rallying- 
point for the unconditional loyalists. I hope our Club will help 
us to this want." And the Club did its work actively and well. 
It seems that the kind of men above alluded to pleased themselves 
by calling it "The Sambo Club." 

The difficulty of getting soldiers, and the paying of enormous 
bounties for inferior men, led to an active interest by several mem- 
bers, among whom Dr. Samuel G. Howe should be specially men- 
tioned, in recruiting coloured soldiers in Kentucky and Tennessee, 
where in the following months several regiments of these were 
raised by the energy of George L. Stearns, already mentioned, 
commissioned a Major by Governor Andrew for this purpose. 

The spring of this year was the darkest time of the war. The 
tide of the Rebellion seemed to be rising; the frightful sacrifice 
of our troops at Fredericksburg was recent, and the great failure 
of Chancellorsville was just coming on. Our finances were em- 
barrassed. In the shipyards of Liverpool ironclad rams, against 
which our ports were defenceless, were being built, unchecked, for 
our foe. 

This unfriendly act Mr. Forbes was anxiously watching. The 
rams, he knew, could break the blockade — then England and 
France would probably interfere to close the war. In March, he 
was summoned from his sick-bed by telegram from Secretary Chase 
to come to New York. Next day he met there the Secretaries of 
the Treasury and Navy. They asked him to sail for England on 
the third day thereafter; to act there, in company with Mr. Wil- 
liam Aspinwall, for the best interests of the United States; espe- 
cially, first, to stop the ironclads; second, to place ten million 
dollars of the new five-twenty bonds. The Commissioners were 
asked to write their own instructions. Mr. Forbes wrote them, and 
the Secretary of the Navy signed them. Mr. Forbes sailed 
promptly; Mr. Aspinwall followed with the bonds a week later. 



i863 



313 



Our Minister, Mr. Adams, and our Consuls were doing all they 
could, but had limited means, and the former, because of his deli- 
cate and highly important position, had to proceed with the utmost 
care. He was strong and courageous, but had to be cool and tact- 
ful. ^ 

The episode is most interesting, but too long to be told in de- 
tail. ^ Suffice it to say that the Commissioners failed to sell the 
bonds abroad at that unpromising time, but that Mr. Forbes ob- 
tained a very large loan on the security of a portion of the bonds 
from his friends, the Barings;^ that he kept close watch on the 
vessels being built for the South, and acquired, through our effi- 
cient Consuls, information that proved important in case the mat- 
ter should come into the courts. The Commissioners even tried 
to buy the vessels, but in vain. Mr. Forbes was in constant cor- 
respondence with the Secretaries at Washington and Governor 
Andrew. He bought cannon for Massachusetts' defence. He did 
everything possible to enlighten the opinion of the English gov- 
erning and influential classes; first, on the real character of the 
struggle; second, on their short-sightedness in creating a precedent 
sure to be dangerous to England in the end. 

The Commissioners, having done everything practicable, re- 
turned in July. Mr. Adams steadfastly and wisely met conditions 
as they arose. 

Mr. Adams wrote the following noteworthy letter to Mr. 
Forbes in September: — 

. . . We are now all in a fever about Mr. Laird's ironclads, one 
of which is on the point of departure, and the other launched 
and getting ready, with double gangs of workmen at it night and 
day. The question now is. Will Government interfere? and it 
must be settled in a day or two at farthest. I have done all in 

* Mr. Adams stayed abroad eight years. After his return he was chosen a member of 
the Club, in 1870. 

^ Mr. Forbes, in his later years, wrote for his children and grandchildren a record of the 
interesting passages of his life. After his death, these were edited and published by his 
daughter, Mrs. William Hastings Hughes, under the title Letters and Recollections of John 
Murray Forbes. His account of this English visit is there given. 

' To Mr. Forbes's integrity and financial knowledge was, of course, added that of our 
member, Mr. Samuel Gray Ward, the Barings' representative in America. 



3^4 The Saturday Club 

my power to inspire them with a just sense of the responsibility 
they may incur from permitting so gross a breach of neutrality. 
If, however, they fail to act, you may perhaps soon see one of 
the vessels, with your glass, from Milton Hill, steaming up to 
Boston. . . . She will stand a cannonade, unless the harbour be 
obstructed. It will be for Governor Andrew to be on the watch 
the moment the news of her departure reaches America. ... Of 
course, if all this takes place, I shall be prepared to make my bow 
to our friends in London as soon as the papers can be made 
out. . . . 

P.S. 9 September. Since writing this, the Government has de- 
cided to stop the vessels. 

Yours truly, C. F. A. 

Mr. Adams did not give the reason of the action mentioned in 
the postscript. 

On the 5th of September he had written to Lord Russell: "At 
this moment, when one of the ironclad vessels is on the point of 
departure from this kingdom on its hostile errand against the 
United States, it would be superfluous for me to point out to your 
lordship that this is war.^^ 

The answer (September 8) was, "Instructions have been issued 
which will prevent the departure of these two ironclad vessels 
from Liverpool." ^ 

George S. Hillard, a Boston man of letters, Adams's contempo- 
rary, wrote: "Mr. Adams had to maintain the rights of his coun- 
try with unbending firmness, and at the same time to keep his 
spirit under perfect rule, as any explosion of ill-temper or any 
expression of irritation, would have been turned to the disadvan- 
tage alike of himself and his country." 

To return to our side of the ocean. July brought the high tide of 
Confederate advance in Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania, and then, 
with the victory of Gettysburg and the surrender of Port Hudson, 
its slow but continuous ebb began. 

The good work in Massachusetts, with widest results, of the 

* It should be said that, before the arrival of Messrs. Forbes and Aspinwall, Mr. Adams 
had secured the detention of the gunboat Alexandra. 



i863 



315 



Sanitary Commission and Loyal Publication Society, in which our 
members took part, went on. Most important aid and further- 
ance was given by some of them in that period of difficulty in 
raising troops. Governor Andrew's able and loyal friends did all 
they could to lighten his manifold heavy burdens. 

Hawthorne, at this time, evidently was ailing, though neither 
he nor his friends realized how serious the trouble would prove. 
Emerson writes in a book in which he entered notes on his friends 
from time to time: "I prescribed for Hawthorne a copious use of 
the Mill Dam.^ He should buy a cow, and instantly he would 
need to call upon Sam Staples, and Coombs, and Gowing, and 
Edmund Hosmer, and John Moore, and the whole senate of the 
Mill Dam, once and again, and very often, for advice, until he 
grew acquainted with folks. J. W. Browne's account of Senator 
Wilson to me was, 'He liked folks.' Hawthorne, I fear, does not." 

Very possibly at this time Hawthorne's fatal disease was begin- 
ning. His political views, no doubt, were biassed by his friendship 
for and correspondence with Franklin Pierce, the ex-President. 
I borrow from Dr. James K. Hosmer's Last Leaf the following 
passage, beginning with Hawthorne's mournful words: — 

"'At present we have no Country. . . . New England is really 
quite as large a lump of earth as my heart can take in. I have no 
kindred with or leaning toward the Abolitionists.' But his cool- 
ness to his Country's welfare was of a piece with the general cool- 
ness toward well and ill in the affairs of the world. Humanity 
rolls before him as it did before Shakspeare, sometimes weak, 
sometimes heroic, depressed, exultant, suffering, happy. He did 
not concern himself to regulate its movement, to heighten its 
joy, or mitigate its sorrow. His work was to portray it as it moved, 
and in that conception of his mission he established his master- 

* The beginning of Concord's main street, where the Mill Brook flows under it; the 
centre where, since the end of the eighteenth century, the shops have gradually succeeded 
the original ancient mill. It is our Rialto, where, in the groceries, the " Squire's " office, or on 
the sidewalk, every one meets. The worthies named were respectively: (i) the benevolent 
constable and jailer; (2) a queer character who grafted trees, handled bees, and believed 
in all rustic superstitions; (3 and 4) old-fashioned sturdy farmers, the latter often men- 
tioned by Emerson in his journals; (5) the deputy-sheriff, also a remarkable modern 
farmer. 



3^6 The Saturday Club 

fulness as an artist, though it abates somewhat, does it not? from 
his wholeness as a man," 

To turn to others of our literary men. Lowell now published 
his collected and increasingly bellicose utterances in the second 
series of "Biglow Papers." Of Norton, at this period, Mr. M. A. 
DeWolfe Howe rightly says, "He was a man whose physical 
health necessarily restricted his service to that of mind and spirit. 
This service he rendered in full measure." He had written in 
the Atlantic wholesome and timely articles, and in this year he, 
with Lowell as fellow-editor, took charge of the North American 
Review. He steadily emphasized the condition that Holmes had 
already expressed, — 

" We grudge them not, — our dearest, bravest, best, — 
Let but the quarrel's issue stand confest; 
'T is Earth's old slave-god battling for his crown, 
And Freedom fighting with her visor down." 

Lowell's fearful presentation of the great issue, in "The 
Washers of the Shroud," has been quoted in the story of the year 
before. 

Whittier, Quaker as he was, cared so much for the great cause 
of Freedom, that the manifestly inherent militant element in 
him, shown in some earlier poems, and, this autumn, in his "In 
War-Time," in some measure reconciled him to the violence and 
the sacrifice of young life in the battle ordeal. Also he had, 
for the first time, seen the humble race just emancipated in the 
surroundings of the Captivity, at Port Royal, and amid their 
rejoicings felt the sad uncertainty of their future. After giving 
the glad song of the negro boatmen, he goes on : — 

"So sang our dusky gondoliers; 
And with a secret pain, 
And smiles that seem akin to tears 
We hear the wild refrain. 

" We dare not share the negro's trust. 
Nor yet his hope deny; 
We only know that God is just, 
And every wrong shall die. 



i863 



317 



" Rude seems the song; each swarthy face, 
Flame-lighted, ruder still: 
We start to think that hapless race 
Must shape our good or ill; 

"Sing on, poor hearts! Your chant shall be 
Our sign of blight or bloom, — 
The Vala-song of Liberty, 
Or death-rune of our doom!" 

But a fortnight after the victory at Gettysburg, a tragic reverse, 
although with a glorious history, occurred. The Fifty-fourth 
Massachusetts Infantry, for permission to raise which and in its 
recruiting and proper officering so much patient and earnest work 
had been done, largely by our members, already had won for itself 
respect and good repute. An assault on Battery Wagner, a well- 
prepared and garrisoned sand fort in Charleston Harbour, by a 
brigade under General Strong, had been decided on, and the 
Fifty-fourth, just arrived after a long and weary march, were 
given the place of honour in the first line. At twilight the rush 
was made. As they toiled up the steep and difficult sand-slope 
they were met at short range by a staggering fire, but the young 
colonel, Robert Shaw, leaped to the front, crying, "Forward, 
Fifty-fourth!" The men followed and he fell, shot dead, into the 
fort. The regiment showed admirable courage and tenacity, but 
the task was too hopeless, especially as they were also suffering 
from the shells of our own Navy in the gathering darkness. 

Colonel Shaw had accepted the command at the outset in the 
face of largely hostile public opinion, leaving for it his place in 
the admirable and aristocratic Second Massachusetts. Of this 
choice, his brother-in-law. Colonel Charles Russell Lowell, wrote: 
"It is important that this regiment be started soberly, and not 
spoiled by too much fanaticism. Shaw is not a fanatic." And after 
his death he wrote: "Everything that comes about Rob shows his 
death to have been more and more completely that which every 
soldier and every man would long to die, but it is given to very 
few, for very few do their duty as Rob did. I am thankful they 
buried him 'with his niggers'; they were brave men and they were 
his men." 



3^8 The Saturday Club 

Lowell paid his tribute to Colonel Shaw's memory, from which 
these verses are selected: — 

MEMORI^ POSITUM 

Right in the van, 
On the red rampart's slippery swell, 
With heart that beat a charge, he fell 

Foeward, as fits a man; 
But the high soul burns on to light men's feet 
Where death for noble ends makes dying sweet; 

His life her crescent's span 
Orbs full with share in their undarkening days 
Who ever climbed the battailous steeps of praise 

Since valour's praise began. 



I write of one, 
While with dim eyes I think of three; 
Who weeps not others fair and brave as he? 

Ah, when the fight is won, 
Dear Land, whom triflers now make bold to scorn 
(Thee! from whose forehead Earth awaits her morn), 

How nobler shall the sun 
Flame in thy sky, how braver breathe thy air. 
That thou bred'st children who for thee could dare 

And die as thine have done! 

The question has been asked now, what Emerson's feelings 
would have been with regard to the war now going on. One has 
but to refer to his tribute to Colonel Shaw, his officers and brave 
coloured soldiers in the "Voluntaries:" — 

"... Best befriended of the God 
He who, in evil times. 
Warned by an inward voice. 
Heeds not the darkness and the dread, 
Biding by his rule and choice, 
Feeling only the fiery thread 
Leading over heroic ground 
Walled with mortal terror round. 



Peril around, all else appalling, 
Cannon in front and leaden rain, — 
Him Duty through the clarion calling 
To the van called not in vain. 



i863 



319 



Stainless soldier on the walls, 

Knowing this, — and knows no more, — 

Whoever fights, whoever falls, 

Justice conquers evermore. 

Justice after as before, — 

And he who battles on her side, 

God, though he were ten times slain, 

Crowns him victor glorified 

Victor over death and pain 

Forever: but his erring foe. 

Self-assured that he prevails. 

Looks from his victim lying low. 

And sees aloft the red right arm 

Redress the eternal scales. ^ 

And, earlier in the poem, the lines, — 

So nigh is grandeur to our dust. 
So near is God to man, 
When Duty whispers low. Thou must. 
The youth replies, / can. 

In April of this year, Longfellow records the completion of a 
task, which he had resumed after years of intermission, as an 
anodyne for the pain of his bereavement: "Finish the transla- 
tion of the Inferno. So the whole work is done; the Purgatorio 
and Paradiso having been finished before. I have written a canto 
a day, thirty-four days in succession, with many anxieties and 
interruptions." 

Agassiz is reported by Emerson, returning from the Club, in 
his journal, as declaring "that he is going to demand of the com- 
munity that provision should be made for the study of Natural 
Science on the same scale as that for the support of Religion." 
Elsewhere he notes, "Agassiz says he means to make the Harvard 
Museum such that no European naturalist can afford to stay 
away from it." 

Early in this year General McClellan visited Boston. His pop- 
ularity had waned since he had been deprived of his command and 
ordered to report at Trenton, his home; but he was cordially re- 
ceived in Boston, especially by the families of soldiers in the Army 
of the Potomac. It does not appear that he was invited to the 

* These last five lines were omitted by Mr. Emerson in later editions. 



3 2 o 'The Saturday Club 

Saturday Club's dinner, but Norton, in a letter written February 
I, says: "McClellan is still here, and is causing people to break 
the Sabbath to-day. Agassiz is a devoted admirer of his, and said 
yesterday, that 'he was a great but not a towering man.' Dr. 
Holmes, studying him physiologically, talks of 'broad base of 
brain,' 'threshing-floor of ideas,' no invention or original force of 
intellect, but compact, strong, executive nature, 'with a neck such 
as not one man in ten thousand possesses,' 'muscular as a prize- 
fighter,' etc., etc." 

In letters written to George William Curtis in September of this 
year by Norton, I find mention of four of our members, though 
only one was so at that time. First, of Olmsted, whose departure 
for California Norton deplores. He had apparently just finished 
his duty as a member of a commission to look into the sanitary 
conditions of the United States forces. Then Norton continues: — 

"A ring at the bell — and I hear William James's pleasant and 
manly voice in the other room, from which the sound of my 
Mother's voice has been coming to me as she reads aloud the con- 
sular experiences of the most original of consuls. To-night I am 
half annoyed, half amused at Hawthorne.^ He is nearly as bad as 
Carlyle. 

"27 September. Charles Eliot is going abroad, . . . and pro- 
poses to spend the next six or eight months in Paris. He means to 
study chemistry, and is also desirous to become thoroughly ac- 
quainted with the system and management and organization of 
some of the public institutions of France. He has a genius for such 
matters, and is well fitted by his training here to discover in the 
foreign institutions the points of the most practical importance 
as capable of adaptation to our needs." ^ 

Longfellow's oldest son, Charles Appleton Longfellow, had 
been commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the First Massa- 
chusetts Cavalry in March. Longfellow notes in his diary: "Nov. 
28th. The Army of the Potomac is advancing. December 1st. At 
dinner received a telegram from Washington stating that Charles 

1 Hawthorne's loyalty and constant friendship for his classmate, ex-President Franklin 
Pierce, persisted to the end, ignoring his pro-slavery advocacy, and his wrongs to the 
Free-State settlers in Kansas and Nebraska. 

* This was six years before Eliot's presidency. 



iS63 



321 



had been severely wounded. Left for Washington at five o'clock." 
The cavalry had been engaged in a minor action at New Hope 
Church. Young Longfellow and Captain Henry P. Bowditch 
(later, distinguished Professor of Physiology, and one of our mem- 
bers) were brought up with other wounded officers to Washington 
to their waiting, anxious parents on the fourth day, young Long- 
fellow with a severe wound through both shoulders, Bowditch 
less severely through the arm. 

The following extract from a letter from Dr. Henry Marion 
Howe, of Columbia University, son of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, 
gives us a pleasant reminiscence of a meeting of about this time. 
Professor Howe evidently was not aware that the Club, though 
in its Silver Age, still is alive: — 

"My sister, Mrs. Hall, tells me that you have asked her for 
reminiscences of my father in connection with the Saturday Club 
in Boston. She tells me that she has no definite recollections, and 
it may be that I am the only living person who ever attended a 
meeting of that Club. 

"When I was a boy about fifteen years old, say in 1863 more or 
less, my father took me to one of the dinners of the Club, and I 
remember with great vividness Mr. Thomas Appleton presiding 
and expatiating on the merits of the Kentucky mutton which he 
was carving. I remember also Dr. Holmes likening the effect 
of the various phases of Christianity brought before young people 
to the effect of hypothetical magnets. He said in effect that, 
suppose in addition to a magnet which attracts iron we had also 
magnets which, instead of attracting iron, attracted some of 
them copper, some of them lead, etc.; if, now, chips of iron, cop- 
per, and lead were all mixed up together, and we passed these 
several magnets over them successively, each metal would re- 
spond to its own magnet irrespective of its environment. 

"My recollection is that at this point my father bade me retire, 
as I was only brought in to see the august assembly before it 
really began its dinner." 

This year the good and brilliant Henry James, Senior, the phi- 
losopher, was the only member chosen into the Club. 



HENRY JAMES 

The Celtic qualities which appeared at their best in Henry James, 
who transmitted them to his sons, came to him from his father, 
who came from Northern Erin in his youth to seek his fortune. 
He found it in Albany, where he became a prosperous merchant. 
His family were well provided for, therefore could follow their 
instincts in choosing their course in life. But also a warm heart, 
hospitality, ready wit, an ever-present sense of humour, and a 
picturesque eloquence rejoicing in combat, were the Jameses' rich 
inheritance. 

Early in life Henry's childish mind began its instinctive fight 
against the Calvinism of the day, passively accepted by his par- 
ents, as he tells amusingly in an autobiographical fragment, thus : — 

"We children of the church had been traditionally taught to 
contemplate God as a strictly supernatural being, bigger personally 
than all the world ; and not only, therefore, out of all sympathy with 
our pigmy infirmities, but exceedingly jealous of the hypocritical 
homage we paid to his contemptuous forbearance. This dramatic 
homage, however, being of an altogether negative complexion, was 
exceedingly trying to us. . . ." And about "keeping Sunday": 
"How my particular heels ached for exercise, and all my senses 
pined to be free, it is not worth while to recount; suffice it to say, 
that although I know my parents were not so Sabbatarian as many, 
I cannot flatter myself that our household sanctity ever presented 
a pleasant aspect to the angels. Nothing is so hard for a child as 
not-to-do, that is, to keep his hands and feet and tongue in enforced 
inactivity. It is a cruel wrong to put such an obligation upon him, 
while his reflective faculties are still undeveloped, and his senses 
urge him to unrestricted action. . . . 

"My boyish animal spirits . . . allowed me, no doubt, very little 
time for reflection; yet it was very seldom that I lay down at 
night without a present thought of God, and some little effort of 
recoil upon myself . . . but the dark, silent night usually let in 
the spectral eye of God, and set me to wondering and pondering 



Henry yames 323 

evermore how I should effectually baffle Its gaze. Now I cannot 
conceive any less wholesome or innocent occupation for the child- 
ish mind than to keep a debtor and creditor account with God; for 
the effect of such discipline Is either to make the child Insufferably 
conceited, or else to harden him In Indifference to the Divine 
name. I was habitually led by my teachers to conceive that at 
best a chronic apathy existed on God's part towards me, super- 
induced, by Christ's work, upon the active enmity he had formerly 
felt towards us; and the only reason why this teaching did not 
leave my mind In a similarly apathetic condition towards him was, 
as I have since become persuaded, that It always met In my soul, 
and was practically paralyzed by a profounder Divine instinct 
which affirmed his stainless and Ineffable love." 

In his youth a sobering Influence came upon Mr. James, an 
infection causing long invalidism and finally the loss of one leg. 
Probably by his own choice he went to the Theological Seminary 
at Princeton. There he found comfort in Stephen Dewhurst, of 
Maryland, a man as spiritually minded and original as himself. 
Of him he says: — 

"However justly sensitive his intellect was to every considera- 
tion growing out of the distinction between good and evil in men's 
actual conduct, he was yet practically Insensible to the preten- 
sion of a distinctively moral righteousness In them as the ground 
of their religious hope. The disproportion between finite and 
infinite seemed In fact so overwhelming to his imagination, as 
to make It impossible to him to deem any man In himself vitally 
nearer to God than any other man. 

"I have often reflected with astonishment since, that one so 
young should have been so thoroughly vastated In the providence 
of God of our ordinarily rank and florid pride of moralism. 

"What distinguished him from us all was his social quality — 
the frank, cordial recognition he always evinced of that vital 
fellowship or equality between man universal and man Individual 
which Is the spiritual fulfilment or glorification of conscience, and 
ends by compelling angel and devil into its equal subservience." 

The above extracts will shed light on James's position in the 
philosophic tournament chronicled later in this story. 



324 The Saturday Club 

Religion was a matter of daily thought with him, but he exe- 
crated easy formalism as he did smug morality. Mr. Emerson 
writes: "In New York, Henry James quoted Thackeray's speeches 
in society. 'He liked to go to Westminster Abbey to say his 
prayers,' etc. ' It gave him the comfortablest feeling.' At the same 
time, he is immoral in his practice, but with limits. . . . He thought 
Thackeray could not see beyond his eyes, and has no ideas, and 
merely is a sounding-board against which his experiences thump 
and resound. He is the merest boy." 

After Mr. James's marriage he moved to New York. Beautiful 
lights are shed on the home life there by the younger Henry in 
his very last and most human books. The father heard Emerson 
lecture there and brought him into his house once and again. 
The thoughts had stirred him. He looked forward to probing each 
of them in a discussion next morning in his study in which, man to 
man, Emerson should with logic defend his intuitions, but was dis- 
appointed. Again and again, through the years of their friendship, 
he tried to compass this. The answer was still the same which, 
years before, Emerson wrote to his honoured friend Henry Ware: 
"I could not possibly give you one of the 'arguments' you cruelly 
hint at, on which any doctrine of mine stands. For I do not know 
what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought." 

Always disappointed of his purpose to make the "inexplicable" 
Emerson give logical reasons for his Intuitions and meet squarely 
the "concretely vital questions" which occupied him, James cries 
out: "Oh you man without a handle! Shall one never be able 
to help himself out of you according to his needs, and be depend- 
ent only upon your fitful tippings-up?" But, despite this avoid- 
ance of the much-desired single combat, the two always remained 
friends, and Emerson particularly desired James as a member of 
the Club, years before it took form, but, until 1864, he lived too 
far away. 

Speaking of the excess of virility of the men whom he met on 
his Western lecturing excursions, Emerson says: "They oppress 
me and would soon become intolerable If It were not for a few 
friends, who, like women, tempered the acrid mass. Henry James 
was true comfort — wise, gentle, polished, with heroic manners, and 



Henry yames 3^5 



a serenity like the sun. * I do not wish this or that thing my fortune 
will procure, I wish the great fortune,' said Henry James, and said 
it in the noble sense." 

Again Emerson wrote of him (November, 1851): "His lectures 
are really brilliant, and I was told that he swallowed up all the 
doctrinaires and neologists in New York, and is left sole aesthetic 
Doctor, Doctor Diibitantium, in that city. He is the best man and 
companion in the world." 

Elsewhere his friend calls him "that sub-soil plougher, Henry 
James." 

Mr. James was an eager Swedenborgian. His books were all 
on religious subjects. Edwin L. Godkin, speaking of his strong 
picturesque writing, adds: "I suppose there was not in his day a 
more formidable master of English style. . . . One of his most 
amusing experiences was that the other Swedenborgians repudi- 
ated all religious connection with him, so that the sect to which 
he belonged, and of which he was the head, may be said to have 
consisted of himself alone.*' Mr. Howells, speaking of one of 
William James's books, said, "He is brilliant, but not clear; like 
his father, who wrote The Secret of Szvedenborg, and kept it." His 
son Henry thus summarizes his view of his father's faith: "The 
optimists of the world, the constructive idealists, as one has 
mainly known them, have too often struck one as overlooking 
more of the aspects of the real than they recognize; whereas our 
indefeasible impression, William's and mine, of our parent was that 
he, by his very constitution and intimate heritage, recognized 
many more of those than he overlooked. What was the finest 
part of our intercourse with him — that is, the most nutritive 
— but a positive record of that?" 

Henry thus affectionately describes his father's happy and con- 
stitutional faith: "That optimism fed so little by any sense of 
things as they were or are, but rich in its vision of the facility 
with which they might become almost at any moment, or from one 
day to the other, totally and splendidly different. A less vague or 
vain idealist could n't, I think, have been encountered; it was given 
him to catch in the fact at almost any turn right or left some fla- 
grant assurance or promise of the state of man transfigured. . . . 



326 T^he Saturday Club 

The case was really of his rather feeling so vast a Tightness close at 
hand, or lurking immediately behind actual arrangements, that a 
single turn of the inward wheel, one real response to pressure of 
the spiritual spring, would bridge the chasms, straighten the dis- 
tortions, rectify the relations and, in a word, redeem and vivify 
the whole mass — after a far sounder, yet, one seemed to see, also 
far subtler, fashion than any that our spasmodic annals had yet 
shown us. It was, of course, the old story that we had only to he 
with more intelligence and faith — an immense deal more, cer- 
tainly — in order to work off, in the happiest manner, the many- 
sided ugliness of life; which was a process that might go on, 
blessedly, in the quietest of all quiet ways." A phrase in the last 
sentence is important. Mr. James's deepest desire was what 
his sons and daughter should he; their works would follow from 
what they were. His love for them amounted to a pang. After 
his superlative fashion of speech, he said to Emerson once, he 
wished sometimes that the lightning would strike his wife and 
children out of existence and he should suffer no more from 
loving them. He had to send his boys to schools. He felt that 
Europe was perhaps the best milieu for their study and culture 
in their adolescent period. But the family went abroad together, 
and he and their mother remained near by. The atmosphere of 
that home was charming, affectionate, stimulating, like that of a 
high mountain near the tropics, and this atmosphere did not 
evaporate during their short separations, not far asunder, while in 
Europe, the boys being at Swiss schools. 

After an absence of five years, Henry the younger, who was 
being infected by the charm of the Old World which held him for 
the rest of his days, found, to his dismay, that they were to return 
to America. "The particular ground for our defection, which I 
obscurely pronounced mistaken, was that since WiUiam was to 
embrace the artistic career . . . our return to America would 
place him in prompt and happy relation to William Hunt, then 
the most distinguished of our painters as well as one of the most 
original and delightful of men, and who had cordially assured us 
that he would welcome such a pupil. ... I am of course not sure 
how often our dear father may not explicatively have mentioned 



Henry yames 327 

the shy fact that he himself in any case had gradually ceased to 
'like' Europe. This affects me at present as in the highest degree 
natural; it was to be his fortune for the rest of his life to find him- 
self, as a worker, in his own field and as to what he held most dear, 
scantly enough heeded, reported, or assimilated even in his own 
air, no brisk conductor at any time of his remarkable voice; but 
in Europe his isolation had been utter. . . . No more admirable 
case of apostolic energy combined with philosophic patience, of 
constancy of conviction and solitary singleness of production un- 
perturbed, can I well conceive." 

On Mr. James's return from Europe with his family, he settled 
in Newport and placed his two younger boys. Garth Wilkinson 
and Robertson, in the excellent school then kept by Mr. F. B. 
Sanborn in Concord. The spring vacations in the years i860 and 
1 86 1 I was invited to spend with them in Newport. I was affec- 
tionately received and thus had the privilege of sharing the inti- 
mate life of this remarkable family. 

Admirable people were then in the quiet Newport when such 
folly and fashion as then were had flitted back to the city: Charles 
L. Brooks, the clergyman and German scholar, Edmund Tweedy, 
almost a brother to Mr. James, George Calvert, William Morris 
Hunt, then domiciled there, the Perrys, and others. 

The family life of the Jameses was most interesting, brilliant, 
original, and aff"ectionate. Mr. James was of medium height, 
limped along on his wooden leg with some activity, but his mind 
and wit were most active and his temperament sympathetic. 
His face reminded one at once of the representations of Soc- 
rates with the bald head, short nose, eyes humorous yet kindly 
(but spectacled), and beard of moderate dimensions; and, like 
Socrates, he delighted in starting a theme to argue with his 
companion to its conclusion — seemingly surprising. For he was 
not only a humourist, but master of the superlative, and, after 
a little almost stuttering hesitation, he, like his sons after 
him, would bring out an adjective or adverb or appellation that 
would startle the literal-minded, but he, with no malice, chose 
to attach other than the usual significations to the word, and 
this might lead to illuminating discussion. Notable examples 



3^8 "The Saturday Club 

of this entertaining habit (edifying, if understood) occur also in 
his writings. 

Meal-times in that pleasant home were exciting. "The adipose 
and affectionate Wilkie," ^ as his father called him, would say 
something and be instantly corrected or disputed by the little 
cock-sparrow Bob,^ the youngest, but good-naturedly defend his 
statement, and then, Henry (Junior) would emerge from his 
silence in defence of Wilkie. Then Bob would be more imper- 
tinently insistent, and Mr. James would advance as Moderator, 
and William, the eldest, join in. The voice of the Moderator 
presently would be drowned by the combatants and he soon came 
down vigorously into the arena, and when, in the excited argu- 
ment, the dinner knives might not be absent from eagerly ges- 
ticulating hands, dear Mrs. James, more conventional, but bright 
as well as motherly, would look at me, laughingly reassuring, say- 
ing, "Don't be disturbed, Edward; they won't stab each other. 
This is usual when the boys come home." And the quiet little 
sister ate her dinner, smiling, close to the combatants. Mr. James 
considered this debate, within bounds, excellent for the boys. In 
their speech, singularly mature and picturesque, as well as vehe- 
ment, the Gaelic (Irish) element in their descent always showed. 
Even if they blundered, they saved themselves by wit. 

Doughty champion as Mr. James was, I once saw him over- 
thrown in a tilt. Mr. Emerson had invited many thoughtful 
people in Concord, and some from the city, including Mr. James 
and Mr. Sam G. Ward, to a "Conversation," at his house, for 
Mr. Alcott's benefit. He wished that this philosopher's pure and 
lofty ideality, which in private so often refreshed and stimulated 
his own thought, should reach open ears and stir good minds. 
It happened that Miss Mary Moody Emerson was also present, 
the extraordinary woman, Emerson's aunt, the inspiring "sibyl" 
of his youth, yet, as brought up in Calvinism, the formidable critic 
of a nephew of whom she was proud. The apostolic Alcott, silver- 

' Garth Wilkinson James, a very charming youth. In 1862 he enlisted in the Forty- 
fourth Massachusetts Regiment. Later, he became the Adjutant in the Fifty-fourth 
Massachusetts Regiment, and was very severely wounded on the slopes of Fort Wagner. 
After the war he settled in the West and died early. 

2 Robertson James. He was Lieutenant in the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment, later, 
Captain, and, after the war, showed himself possessed of many literary and artistic gifts. 



Henry jfames 329 

haired and of benignant face, as ever, assuming assent — "We 
find, — do we not?" etc. — began his quiet talk. He had not 
gone far when Mr. James, who supposed that the "Conversa- 
tion" to which he was bidden was to be really such, threw a critical 
question in Mr. Alcott's path. The philosopher quietly glided 
round the obstacle, but Mr. James would not be ignored, and 
with pleasant pertinacity insisted on having his objection met. 
Mr. Alcott looked a little annoyed and tried to brush the interrup- 
tion aside (as he did mosquitoes, which he never struck). He 
was no swordsman; had no slightest skill in argument, while Mr. 
James, like Socrates, delighted in dialectics, and, moreover, sup- 
posed himself fully within his rights when asked to a "Conver- 
sation." Soon Mr. Alcott was piteously routed, and now Mr. 
James, sole occupant of the field, talked on the ethical theme, but 
obscuring his thought to the common hearer by his brilliant but 
whimsical use of words. He with vigorous wit attacked " Morality " 
as pernicious. But the victory was not yet won. Suddenly Miss 
Mary Emerson, eighty-four years old, dressed underneath, with- 
out doubt, in her shroud, which in later years she always wore, 
covered without by some black semblances of the attire of old 
ladies, her head closely capped, reared her five feet one inch of 
height, crossed the room, and, as the prophet Samuel slew with 
the sword Agag, King of the Amalekites whom Saul had spared, 
so she, trembling with zeal, and shaking this daring sinner by the 
shoulders, as she spoke, rebuked his speech. Mr. James beamed 
with delight and spoke with most chivalrous courtesy to this 
Deborah bending over him. The fact was- that by "Morality" 
he meant self-conscious ethics, dangerously near hypocrisy 
— acting for observation's and example's sake. He went away 
with little opinion of Alcott, but the highest of this aged antago- 
nist. The curious fact was that she, prizing, with Calvin, "burn- 
ing faith above works," was really, had they talked the matter 
out, in more sympathy with Mr. James than anyone in the room. 
In England Mr. James made many calls on Carlyle before he 
was broken with age and grief. It is pleasant to think of these 
meetings, for the valiant American was by no means the man to 
avoid or go down before the dour Borderer's spear — would have 



3 3° "The Saturday Club 

enjoyed the encounter and gone through it, secure in his kindly 
humour, yet sorry for the pessimist. He was soon disillusioned as 
to any advancing, working, spiritual quality in this Jeremiah. 

"I think he felt a helpless dread and distrust of you instantly 
that he found you had any positive hope In God or practical love 
to man. . . . Pity is the highest style of intercourse he allowed 
himself with his kind. He compassionated all his friends in the 
measure of his affection for them. 'Poor John Sterling,' he used 
always to say; 'poor John Mill,' 'poor Frederic Maurice,' 'poor 
Arthur Helps,' 'poor little Browning,' 'poor little Lewes,' and so 
on; as If the temple of his friendship were a hospital, and all its 
inmates scrofulous or paralytic." 

Mr. James finds in him the dour Covenanting tradition in a 
new form : — 

"Carlyle, inheriting and cherishing for its picturesque capabili- 
ties this rude Covenanting conception, which makes God a being 
of the most aggravated moral dimensions, of a wholly super- 
human egotism, or sensibility to his own consequence, of course 
found Mahomet, William the Conqueror, John Knox, Frederic the 
Second of Prussia, Goethe, men after God's own heart, and coolly 
told you that no man in history was ever unsuccessful who de- 
served to be otherwise. 

"Nothing maddened him so much as to be mistaken for a re- 
former, really Intent upon the Interests of God's righteousness 
upon the earth, which are the Interests of universal justice. This 
is what made him hate Americans, and call us a nation of bores 
— that we took him at his word, and reckoned upon him as a 
sincere well-wisher to his species. 

"He was mother Eve's own darling cantankerous Thomas, in 
short, the child of her dreariest, most melancholy old age; and 
he used to bury his worn, dejected face In her penurious lap. In 
a way so determined as forever to shut out all sight of God's new 
and better creation." 

Mr. James was the only man chosen into the Club in 1863, 
when he was on the point of moving to Cambridge. The following 
record of his first appearance is from Longfellow's journal: — 



Henry yames 3 3 ^ 

"January 26th, 1861. Club dinner. Emerson and Hawthorne 
came from Concord. And (as guests) we had Channing — 'our 
Concord poet,' as Emerson calls him — and Henry James, the 
philosopher." 

Mr. James, in a letter to Emerson soon after, chronicles the 
occasion in brilliant superlative. I suppress two names of honoured 
members, friends of Mr. James, too, who chanced to bore him on 
that day, distracting him from delighted observation of Haw- 
thorne. 

"I cannot forbear to say a word I want to say about Haw- 
thorne and Ellery Channing. Hawthorne is n't a handsome man, 
nor an engaging one personally. He has the look all the time, to 
one who does n't know him, of a rogue who suddenly finds him- 
self in a company of detectives. But in spite of his rusticity, I 
felt a sympathy for him amounting to anguish, and could n't take 
my eyes off him all the dinner, nor my rapt attention, as that 
Indecisive little X found, I am afraid, to his cost, for I hardly 
heard a word of what he kept on saying to me, and felt at one 
time very much like sending down to Parker to have him removed 
from the room as maliciously putting his little artificial person 
between me and a profitable object of study. Yet I feel now no 
ill-will to X, and could recommend any one (but myself) to go and 
hear him preach. Hawthorne, however, seemed to me to possess 
human substance, and not to have dissipated It all away, as that 
debauched Y. And the good, inoffensive, comforting Longfellow, 
he seemed much nearer the human being than any one at that end 
of the table — much nearer. John Forbes and yourself kept up the 
balance at the other end; but that end was a desert, with him for 
its only oasis. It was so pathetic to see him, contented, sprawling. 
Concord owl that he was and always has been, brought blindfold 
into the brilliant daylight, and expected to wink and be lively like 
any little dapper Tommy Titmouse or Jenny Wren. How he buried 
his eyes In his plate, and ate with a voracity that no person should 
dare to ask him a question. My heart broke for him as that 
attenuated Y kept putting forth his long antennae toward him, 
stroking his face, and trying whether his eyes were shut. 

"The Idea I got was, and it was very powerfully impressed on 



332 "The Saturday Club 

me, that we are all monstrously corrupt, hopelessly bereft of 
human consciousness, and that it is the intention of the Divine 
Providence to overrun us and obliterate us in a new Gothic 
and Vandalic invasion, of which this Concord specimen is a first 
fruit. It was heavenly to see him persist in ignoring Y, and 
shutting his eyes against his spectral smiles; eating his dinner and 
doing absolutely nothing but that, and then going home to his 
Concord den to fall on his knees and ask his Heavenly Father why 
it was that an owl could n't remain an owl, and not be forced into 
the diversions of a canary. I have no doubt that all the tenderest 
angels saw to his case that night, and poured oil into his wounds 
more soothing than gentlemen ever knew. 

"Ellery Channing, too, seemed so human and good — sweet 
as sunshine, and fragrant as pine woods. He is more sophisticated 
than the others, of course, but still he was kin; and I felt the world 
richer by two men who had not yet lost themselves in mere 
members of society. This is what I suspect — that we are fast 
getting so fearful one to another, we members of society, that we 
shall ere long begin to kill one another in self-defence, and give 
place in that way to a more veracious state of things. The old 
world is breaking up on all hands — the glimpse of the everlast- 
ing granite I caught in Hawthorne shows me that there is stock 
enough for fifty better. Let the old impostor (i.e., society) go, bag 
and baggage, for a very real and substantial one is aching to come 
in, in which the churl shall not be exalted to a place of dignity, in 
which innocence shall never be tarnished or trafficked in, in which 
every man's freedom shall be respected down to its feeblest fila- 
ment as the radiant altar of God. To the angels, says Swedenborg, 
Death means Resurrection to Life; by that necessary rule of in- 
version which keeps them separate from us and us from them, and 
so prevents our being mutual nuisances." ^ 

As the Club has gone on, and the proportion of its poets, even 
those "of one poem," has grown less and less, it was pleasant to 
find this one attributed to the elder James: — 

^ In this letter, as in the one about his friend Cariyle, full allowance must be made for 
Mr. James's love for extravaganza, trusting to the reader's wit for due abatement. 



Henry yames '^ii, 

MIDSUMMER 

Now it is June, and the secret is told; 
Flashed from the buttercups' glory of gold; 
Hummed in the bumblebee's gladness, and sung 
New from each bough where a bird's nest is swung; 
Breathed from the clover beds, when the winds pass; 
Chirped in small psalms, through the aisles of the grass. 



Chapter XI 
1864 

Through the street 

I hear the drummers making riot. 
And I sit thinking of the feet 

That followed once, and now are quiet. 

Have I not held them on my knee? 

Did I not love to see them growing. 
Three likely lads as well could be. 

Handsome and brave, and not too knowing? 

I sit and look into the blaze 

Whose nature, just like theirs, keeps climbing 

Long as it lives in shining ways. 

And half despise myself for rhyming. 

What 's talk to them, whose faith and truth 
On War's red touchstone rang true metal. 

Who ventured life and love and youth 
For the great prize of death in battle? ^ 

Lowell 

LOWELL had been asked to take up, and transfuse blood rich 
enough for the great period, into the ageing quarterly, the 
North American Review. He was so stirred, and charged with 
feeling, that he was moved to accept the task at the beginning 
of the year, but only on condition that his friend Norton should 
assume the more active duties of editor. But Lowell wrote a 
political article in almost every number, certainly during that 
most important year of the Presidential election. 

It is remarkable that, while several of our wisest members, 
though voting for Lincoln as the best man who could be elected, 
were yet uneasy at again choosing, in that dangerous period, "a 
pilot who waited to ask his crew's opinion," — Lowell, hitherto 
so radical, maintained that the President's conduct was right, 

' Mr. Emerson was troubled at the rustic Hosea Biglow version in which Lowell chose to 
clothe his lament for his nephews, and when including the verses in his Parnassus asked 
Lowell to change them to English more seemly for the subject. This the poet did, but 
under protest. 



i864 



335 



and, comparing him to the pilot of a shaky raft, said, "The Coun- 
try is to be congratulated that he did not think it his duty to 
run straight at all hazards, but cautiously to assure himself with 
his setting-pole where the main current was and keep steadily to 
that." He was rejoiced when Lincoln won the nomination, and 
championed him eflfectively in the quarterly through the year. 
Norton too worked with zeal to show the issue as being the pres- 
ervation of true democracy. 

At about Thanksgiving time in the previous year, Longfellow's 
Sudbury Tales — its title at the last minute changed to Tales of 
a Wayside Inn — had been published. Copies, sent by him to 
friends, brought back to him grateful letters. Hawthorne's low 
spirits, due to unrecognized advancing disease, were cheered by 
his friend's remembrance, and he wrote: — 

Concord, January 2, 1864. 

Dear Longfellow: It seems idle to tell you that I have read 
the Wayside Inn with great comfort and delight. I take vast satis- 
faction in your poetry, and take very little in most other men's, 
except it be the grand old strains that have been sounding on 
through all my life. . . . 

It gratifies my mind to find my own name shining in your 
verse — even as if I had been gazing up at the moon and detected 
my own features in its profile. 

I have been much out of sorts of late, and do not well know what 
is the matter with me; but am inclined to draw the conclusion that 
I shall have little more to do with pen and ink. One more book 
I should like well enough to write, and have indeed begun it, but 
with no assurance of ever bringing it to an end. As is always the 
case, I have a notion that the last book would be my best, and 
full of wisdom about matters of life and death — • and yet it will 
be no deadly disappointment if I am compelled to drop it. You 
can tell, far better than I, whether there is anything worth having 
in literary reputation; and whether the best achievements seem 
to have any substance after they grow cold. 

Your friend, 

Nathl. Hawthorne. 



33^ "The Saturday Club 

Another letter might find place here because of its allusions : — 

Concord, February 24, 1862. 

My dear Longfellow: What a rusty place is the country to 
live in, where a man loses his manners. ... I have never thanked 
you for the New Year's poems, — chiefly, the "Birds" [of Kill- 
ingworth], which is serene, happy, and immortal as Chaucer, and 
speaks to all conditions. . . . Was it you who sent me, a week 
earlier, ... a Brussels publishers' list announcing the French 
translation of Representative Men as defendee in France .f* — of which 
too much honour I am curious to know the cause. 

Have you read Elliot Cabot's paper on "Art".? How danger- 
ously subtile! One would say it must be the epitaph of existing 
art, if the artists once read and understand him. And yet, of 
course, he will say — only to begin a new creation. But I am very 
proud of Boston when it turns out such a Greek as Cabot. 

When will you come back to the Saturdays, which want their 
ancient lustre.? ... I have often in these solitudes questions to 
ask you ; but at such meetings they have no answers. 

R. W. Emerson. 

From Emerson's journal: — 

"February 28, 1864. Yesterday at the Club with Cabot, 
Ward, Holmes, Lowell, Judge Hoar, Appleton, Howe, Woodman, 
Forbes, Whipple, with General Barlow,^ and Mr. Howe, of Nova 
Scotia, for guests; but cramped for time by late dinner and early 
hour of the return train — a cramp which spoils a club. For you 
shall not, if you wish good fortune, even take pains to secure your 
right and left hand men. The least design instantly makes an 
obligation to make their time agreeable, which I can never as- 
sume. Holmes was gay with his 'preadamite mentioned in the 
Scriptures — Chap First'; and Appleton with 'that invariable 
love of hypocrisy which delights the Saxon race,' etc." 

The following were evidently brought home from the Club: — 

"Scotus Erigena, sitting at the table of Charles the Bald, 

1 Francis C. Barlow, whose brilliant military talent and utter courage raised him from 
a private volunteer soldier to a Major-General's command, lived in Concord with his 
mother in his boyhood and attended the Academy. 



i864 



337 



when the King asked him how far a Scot was removed from a sot^ 
answered with Irish wit, 'By a table's breadth.' 

"The old sharper said 'his conscience was as good as ever it 
was; he had never used it any,'" 

This entry is also from Emerson's journal: — 

"March 26, 1864. At the Club, where was Agassiz just re- 
turned from his lecturing tour, having created a Natural History 
Society in Chicago, where four thousand, five hundred dollars 
were subscribed as its foundation by nineteen persons.^ And to 
which he recommended the appointment of Mr. Kinnicott as the 
superintendent. 

"Dr. Holmes had received a demand from Geneva, New York, 
for fifty-one dollars as cost of preparing for his failed lecture. 
Governor Andrew was the only guest.^ Hedge, Hoar, both the 
Howes, Holmes, Lowell, Norton, Woodman, Whipple, were pres- 
ent. It was agreed that the April election should be put off till 
May, and that the next meeting should be on April 23d instead 
of 30th, and that we should, on that day, have an open Club, 
allowing gentlemen whom we should designate to join us in hon- 
our of Shakspeare's birthday. The committee of the Club might 
invite certain gentlemen also as the guests of the Club; Emerson, 
Lowell, and Holmes being the Committee." 

April came, and on its 23rd day brought around the supposed 
Three Hundredth Anniversary of Shakspeare's birth. ^ I find no 
record of the celebration planned by the Club, excepting in let- 
ters, Holmes's poem, Emerson's journal, and Cabot's Memoir 
of Emerson. 

The following letter from Emerson, who would seem to have 
been on the committee, is preserved: — 

Concord, 18 April, Monday. 
My dear Mr. Forbes: I am in pain to hear from you in the 
matter of our Shakspeare festival of the Saturday Club on the 

1 Footnote by R. W. E. When I visited the "Chicago Natural History A-Iuseum" in 
1865, the fund had become $50,000. 

2 He was chosen a member shortly after. 

' The Stratford parish records show that Shakspeare was christened April 26, 1564, 
and, as it was common then to perform this rite on the third day of a child's life, and also 
because of a tradition that he died [1616] on. the anniversary of his birthday, April 23 is 
accepted. 



33^ The Saturday Club 

23d instant. We cannot do without your presence and aid on that 
day. I fear that in your journeyings and patriotic and private 
toils my note has never reached you. One part on which we re- 
lied on you was, for the urging Whittier to come. I sent him 
the formal invitation of the Club, and told him that he would 
very likely hear again from you; as I remembered that you had 
expressed the confidence that you would one day bring him. 
Bryant and Richard Grant White are coming, and R. H. Dana, 
Sr., and Everett and Governor Andrew; and Longfellow is com- 
ing back, and it is very desirable that this true poet, and hid like 
a nightingale, should be there. But I have heard that his sister 
is ill, and he is not likely to come. He has not sent any reply as 
yet, and I fancy that its falling on Saturday and his terror of be- 
ing in Boston on the Sunday may be in the way. But if you, who 
are a ruler of men, will promise to protect him, and say how ex- 
ceptional the occasion is, I yet hope you will bring him with you. 

Ever yours 

R. W. Emerson. 

P.S. ... It is now fixed at four o'clock, p.m., at the Revere 
House. 

No mention of the occasion appears in Longfellow's journal, 
as edited by his brother. 

Emerson soon after writes to Ward: — 

Concord, Wednesday, 6 April, 1864. 
My dear Friend: — 

At our meeting yesterday to mature the plan for the 23d — 
the project of inviting gentlemen to pay their scot was pronounced 
impracticable; and it was settled that the Committee must fix 
on the names of the guests, and invite them in the name of the 
Club; and that each member of the Club should, if he would, have 
the privilege of paying for one of these guests. Of course we 
must not have more guests than we could pay for and we counted 
thirteen members, perhaps fourteen, on whom to rely. But of 
course, also we must not give them the privilege of choosing their 
guests unless they please to choose the guests of the Club. These 
we agreed on, as follows: — 



i864 



339 



Governor Andrew 
W. C. Bryant 
George Bancroft 
G. C. Verplanck 
Richard Grant White 
Edward Everett 
George Ticknor 



Dr. Asa Gray 
John G. Whittier 
John Neal 
Edwin Booth 
Professor Child 
George W. Curtis 
James T. Fields 



R. H. Dana, Sr. 

There are already fifteen names, without counting one or two 
more which had their patrons. In this State of Venice, we can 
only allow you an option at first within this list. But five or six 
of these will not come, and then, if we do not give you per- 
emptorily others (and Norton has suggested Wendell Phillips 
to be added — but he, I suppose, will not come), we shall, at once, 
accept your nominee. It seems we cannot easily have a larger 
table than thirty-eight. . . . 

R. W. Emerson. 

S. G. Ward. ' 

Many of the invited guests were unable to be present. Mrs. 
James T. Fields kindly furnished me with this list of guests and 
order of seats at this celebration: — 



Governor Andrew 
Dr. Frothingham 
Dr. S. G. Howe 
John Weiss 
Dr. Hedge 
M. Brimmer 
J. F. Clark 
Judge Hoar 
J. R. Lowell 
J. T. Fields 
C. E. Norton 
G. I. Davis 
O. W. Holmes 
R. C. Winthrop 



Agassiz 

R. H. Dana 

Richard Grant White 
Professor Child 
J. S. Dwight 
J. M. Forbes 
Professor Peirce 
E. P. Whipple 
G. S. Hillard 
H. Woodman 
Dr. Estes Howe 
Professor Gray 
R. W. Emerson 
George William Curtis 
T. G. Appleton 
Dr. Palfrey 
H. W. Longfellow 



340 The Saturday Club 

Probably, with the addition of Cabot, whom Mr. Fields forgot, 
the above list is correct. 

Dr. Holmes rose to the occasion with his poem. In its opening 
verses he voices the unfriendly attitude, for the time, of the 
English Government, yet claims our equal right in Shakspeare. 

SHAKSPEARE 

Who claims our Shakspeare from that realm unknown 
Beyond the storm-vexed islands of the deep, 
Where Genoa's roving mariner was blown? 
Her twofold Saints'-day let our England keep; 
Shall warring aliens share her holy task? 
The Old World echoes ask. 

O land of Shakspeare! ours with all thy past. 
Till these last years that make the sea so wide, 
Think not the jar of battle's trumpet-blast 
Has dulled our aching sense to joyous pride 
In every noble word thy sons bequeathed — 
The air our fathers breathed! 

War-wasted, haggard, panting from the strife, 

We turn to other days and far-off lands. 

Live o'er in dreams the Poet's faded life, 

Come with fresh lilies in our fevered hands 

To wreathe his bust and scatter purple flowers, — 

Not his the need, but ours! 

We call those poets who are the first to mark 
Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn, — 
Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, 
While others only note that day is gone; 
For him the Lord of light the curtain rent 
That veils the firmament. 



Yet heaven's remotest orb is partly ours, 
Throbbing its radiance like a beating heart; 
In the wide compass of angelic powers 
The instinct of the blind worm has its part; 
So in God's kingliest creature we behold 
The flower our buds infold. 



i864 



3+1 



With no vain praise we mock the stone-carved name 
Stamped once on dust that moved with pulse and breath, 
As thinking to enlarge that amplest fame 
Whose undimmed glories gild the night of death. 
We praise not star or sun; in these we see 
Thee, Father, only thee! 

Thy gifts are beauty, wisdom, power and love; 
We read, we reverence in this human soul, — 
Earth's clearest mirror of the light above, — 
Plain as the record on Thy prophet's scroll, 
When o'er his page the affluent splendours poured, 
Thine own "Thus saith the Lord!" 



In this dread hour of Nature's utmost need. 
Thanks for these unstained drops of freshening dew! 
Oh, while our martyrs fall, our heroes bleed, 
Keep us to every sweet remembrance true. 
Till from this blood-red sunset springs new-born 
Our Nation's second morn! 

Mr. Emerson, in his journal the next day, wrote: — ■ 

"We regretted much the absence of Mr. Bryant, and Whittier, 
Edward Everett, and William Hunt, who had at first accepted 
our invitations, but were prevented at last; and of Hawthorne, 
Dana, Sumner, Motley, and Ward, of the Club, necessarily 
absent; also of Charles Sprague, and Wendell Phillips and T. W. 
Parsons, and George Ticknor, who had declined our invitations. 
William Hunt graced our hall by sending us his full-length picture 
of Hamlet, a noble sketch. It was a quiet and happy evening 
filled with many good speeches, from Agassiz who presided (with 
Longfellow as croupier, but silent). Dr. Frothingham, Winthrop, 
Palfrey, White, Curtis, Hedge, Lowell, Hillard, Clarke, Governor 
Andrew, Hoar, Weiss, and a fine poem by Holmes, read so ad- 
mirably well that I could not tell whether in itself it were one of 
his best or not. The company broke up at 11:30. 

"One of Agassiz's introductory speeches was, *Many years 
ago, when I was a young man, I was introduced to a very estim- 
able lady in Paris, who in the conversation said to me that she 
wondered how a man of sense could spend his days in dissecting 



342 "The Saturday Club 

a fish. I replied, " Madame, If I could live by a brook which had 
plenty of gudgeons, I should ask nothing better than to spend all 
my life there." But since I have been in this country, I have 
become acquainted with a Club, in which I meet men of various 
talents; one man of profound scholarship in the languages; one 
of elegant literature, or a high mystic poet; or one man of large 
experience In the conduct of affairs; one who teaches the blind to 
see, and, I confess, that I have enlarged my views of life; and 
I think that besides a brook full of gudgeons, I should wish to 
meet once a month such a society of friends.'" 

The following comes soon after in Emerson's journal: — 

"And Shakspeare. How to say it, I know not, but I know that 
the point of praise of Shakspeare is, the pure poetic power; he is the 
chosen closet companion, who can, at any moment, by incessant 
surprises, work the miracle of mythologizing every fact of the 
Common life; as snow, or moonlight, or the level rays of sunrise — 
lend a momentary glory to every pump and woodpile." 

Cabot, in his Memoir of Emerson, tells the following story of 
him on this occasion: "He rarely attempted the smallest speech 
impromptu, and never, I believe, with success, I remember his 
getting up at a dinner of the Saturday Club on the Shakspeare 
anniversary in 1864 to which some guests had been invited; look- 
ing about him tranquilly for a moment or two, and then sitting 
down; serene and unabashed, but unable to say a word upon a 
subject so familiar to his thoughts from boyhood." ^ 

Mr. Tom Appleton noted concerning this anniversary: "In the 
city of Boston addresses were made before the New England 
Historic Genealogical Society in the Hall of Representatives at 
the State House, now the Senate Chamber; at Music Hall there 
was a music festival inaugurated by Mendelssohn's 'Midsummer 
Night's Dream'; all the theatres produced Shakspeare's plays, 
and the members of one social club pledged each other in a cup of 
sack." 

* Yet the address "Shakspeare" printed in the Miscellanies (Emerson's Works, Cen- 
tenary Edition) seems beyond question, by internal and external evidence, to have been 
prepared for this occasion. On the manuscript Mr. Emerson noted that it was read at the 
Club's celebration of that occasion, and at the Revere House. Yet the handwriting is that 
of Mr. Emerson's later years, so it is possible that Mr. Cabot was right. Perhaps Mr. 
Emerson forgot to bring his notes with him and so did not venture to speak. 



i864 



Z\Z 



The Transcript extolled in its next issue Mr. Lang's Grand 
Festival Concert at the Music Hall: "The grand association of 
names and subjects which the occasion furnishes, Shakspeare, 
Goethe, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn; the 'Midsummer Night's 
Dream,' 'Coriolanus,' 'The First Walpurgis Night,' make the 
choicest attraction for refined and cultivated tastes." I believe 
it is true that our member Mr. John S. Dwight bore an important 
part in the organization and management of that musical festival. 

On the 27th, Appleton wrote his half brother, Lieutenant Na- 
than Appleton, recovered from his wound and then in camp in 
Virginia: "We had for Shakspearian a famous field-day of our 
Saturday Club. All the wits were there, and speeches, one better 
than another, were made by everybody. Brother Henry [Long- 
fellow] made his first public appearance then, and looked very 
grand at the head of the table." 

And yet none of the wit and eloquence was recorded. 

Had Mr. James been present at the Shakspeare festival — he 
was abroad at the time — the general praise might have been 
spiced by this view found in the Autohio graphical Fragment: 
"Ecclesiastics and men of science conceive that men are alto- 
gether sufficiently created when they are naturally born. But natu- 
ral constitution is not spiritual creation, by a long odds. It is 
proof, no doubt, to our heavy wit that something has been created: 
but what, we do not know. We sometimes fancy that the creative 
energy is conspicuous in endowing the temperament of genius, 
and producing such persons as Shakspeare, Newton, and Frank- 
lin. . . . Now revelation makes exceedingly light of Shakspeare. 
. . . For it represents no man as really created^ who is unredeemed 
from his natural selfhood, or unclothed with a regenerate person- 
ality. Our emulative Shakspeares, Newtons, and Franklins may 
doubtless find this law hard. . . . Nevertheless, such is the law of 
creation which revelation discloses, whatever man of genius may 
think of it; and it is decidedly wiser at the start to try to under- 
stand it before proceeding to reject it. I am persuaded for my 
own part that there is nothing really hard in the animus of the 
law; but, on the contrary, everything that is amiable and blessed." 

Two days after the Shakspeare Festival, but with no connection, 



344 T^he Saturday Club 



except as regards the history of the poet, the Daily Advertiser 
copies from the Dedham Gazette the following concerning one of our 
members: "We are glad to learn that the proposition to sever the 
connection between the College and the State is meeting with great 
favour. . . . During the present season John G. Whittier was 
denied a reelection to a position which he dignified and adorned 
because two or three clergymen of indifferent reputation and quali- 
fications endeavoured to 'mix in.' . . ." 

In the spring of 1864, Mr. Dana tells in his diary that he went 
to Washington on official business, and used the occasion to visit 
the Army of the Potomac but a few days before Grant advanced 
into the Wilderness with its succession of desperate fights. He was 
the guest of Captain Charles Francis Adams, Jr., then command- 
ing a detachment of the First Massachusetts Cavalry, serving as 
guard, at General Meade's headquarters. He wrote of his pleas- 
ure in meeting Generals Meade and Humphreys, gentlemen, well 
bred, courteous, honourable men; and Sedgwick, bluff, pleasant, 
hearty fellow, brave and self-possessed and a thorough fighter, 
adding: "Headquarters is an inspiriting, Washington a dispirit- 
ing, place." 

A few days later, he writes from Washington: "The President 
told me he had read my pamphlet on the decision of the Supreme 
Court,! and that it cleared up his mind on the subject entirely; 
that it reasoned out and put into scientific statement what he 
had all along felt in his bones must be the truth." 

James T. Fields wrote :2 "On the 28th of March, Hawthorne 
came to town and made my house his first station on a journey to 
the South for health. I was greatly shocked at his invalid appear- 
ance, and he seemed quite deaf. The light in his eye was beautiful 
as ever, but his limbs seemed shrunken and his usual stalwart 
vigour utterly gone. He said to me with a pathetic voice, 'Why 
does Nature treat us like little children! I think we could bear 
it all if we knew our fate; at least it would not make much differ- 
ence to me now what became of me.' Toward night he brightened 
up a little, and his delicious wit flashed out, at intervals, as of old; 
but he was evidently broken and dispirited about his health." 

1 On the blockading rights of the United States. * Yesterdays with Authors. 



i864 



345 



The result was sad and far from helpful. Mr. William Ticknor, 
his companion, died suddenly in Philadelphia on their south- 
ward journey. In May, Hawthorne set forth again, this time 
northward, with his old college friend and his benefactor in the 
consular appointment, ex-President Pierce, of whose political 
misdeeds with regard to Kansas and Nebraska he probably had 
— as a man living in his dreams, remote from politics — little 
knowledge. His Life of Franklin Pierce, designed as a campaign 
document in 1852, had preceded these. Dr. Holmes had been 
told that Hawthorne, seriously ailing, and about to set forth on 
this journey for health, was to spend the night at a Boston hotel. 
He felt moved to visit him there, hoping to learn something of his 
symptoms and perhaps make some helpful suggestions. Haw- 
thorne, he said, was gentle, and docile to counsel, but so hesitant 
"that talking with him was almost like love-making, and his shy, 
beautiful soul had to be wooed from its bashful pudency like an 
unschooled maiden." He evidently had no hope. "The calm 
despondency with which he spoke about himself confirmed the 
unfavourable opinion suggested by his look and history." 

On May 19, Hawthorne died, sleeping, at Plymouth, New Hamp- 
shire. The husband of his younger daughter Rose, George Par- 
sons Lathrop, wrote: "He passed on into the shadow as if of his 
own will, feeling that his Country lay in ruins, that the human 
lot carried with it more hate and horror and sorrow than he could 
longer bear to look at; welcoming — except as those dear to him 
were concerned — the prospect of that death which he alone knew 
to be so near. . . . Afterward it was recalled with a kind of awe 
that, through many years of his life, Hawthorne had been in the 
habit, when trying his pen, or idly scribbling at any time, of 
writing the number of sixty-four; as if the foreknowledge of his 
death . . . had already begun to manifest itself in this indirect 
way long before." 

Dr. Holmes wrote in his journal: "On the 24th of May we car- 
ried Hawthorne through the blossoming orchards of Concord, and 
laid him down under a group of pines, on a hillside, overlooking 
historic fields. All the way from the village church to the grave the 
birds kept up a perpetual melody. The sun shone brightly, and 



34^ "The Saturday Club 

the air was sweet and pleasant, as if death had never entered the 
world. Longfellow and Emerson, Channing and Hoar, Agassiz 
and Lowell, Greene and Whipple, Alcott and Clarke, Holmes and 
Hillard, and other friends whom he loved, walked slowly by his side 
that beautiful spring morning. The companion of his youth and 
his manhood, for whom he would willingly, at any time, have given 
up his own life, Franklin Pierce, was there among the rest, and 
scattered flowers into the grave. The unfinished Romance, which 
had cost him so much anxiety, the last literary work on which he 
had ever been engaged, was laid on his coffin." 

On the next day Emerson wrote in his journal: — 

"Yesterday, we buried Hawthorne in Sleepy Hollow, in a 
pomp of sunshine and verdure, and gentle winds. James Free- 
man Clarke read the service in the church and at the grave, 
Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Agassiz, Hoar, Dwight, Whipple, 
Norton, Alcott, Hillard, Fields, Judge Thomas, and I attended 
the hearse as pallbearers. Franklin Pierce was with the family. 
The church was copiously decorated with white flowers delicately 
arranged. The corpse was unwillingly shown — only a few mo- 
ments to this company of his friends. But it was noble and serene 
in its aspect — nothing amiss — a calm and powerful head. A 
large company filled the church and the grounds of the cemetery. 
All was so bright and quiet that pain or mourning was hardly sug- 
gested, and Holmes said to me that it looked like a happy meeting. 

"Clarke in the church said that Hawthorne had done more 
justice than any other to the shades of life, shown a sympathy 
with the crime in our nature, and, like Jesus, was the friend of 
sinners. I thought there was a tragic element in the event, that 
might be more fully rendered — in the painful solitude of the man, 
which, I suppose, could not longer be endured, and he died of it. 

"I have found In his death a surprise and disappointment. I 
thought him a greater man than any of his works betray, that 
there was still a great deal of work in him, and that he might one 
day show a purer power. Moreover, I have felt sure of him in his 
neighbourhood, and in his necessities of sympathy and intelligence 

— that I could well wait his time — his unwillingness and caprice 

— and might one day conquer a friendship. It would have been 



i864 



347 



a happiness, doubtless to both of us, to have come Into habits of 
unreserved Intercourse. It was easy to talk with him — there 
were no barriers — only, he said so little, that I talked too much, 
and stopped only because, as he gave no indications, I feared to 
exceed. He showed no egotism or self-assertion, rather a humility, 
and, at one time, a fear that he had written himself out. One day, 
when I found him on the top of his hill, in the woods, he paced 
back the path to his house, and said, 'This path is the only re- 
membrance of me that will remain.' Now it appears that I waited 
too long. 

"Lately he had removed himself the more by the indignation 
his perverse politics and unfortunate friendship for that paltry 
Franklin Pierce awakened, though it rather moved pity for Haw- 
thorne, and the assured belief that he would outlive it, and come 
right at last. 

"I have forgotten in what year ^ [September 27, 1842], but it 
was whilst he lived in the Manse, soon after his marriage, that I 
said to him, 'I shall never see you in this hazardous way; we must 
take a long walk together. Will you go to Harvard and visit the 
Shakers.^' He agreed, and we took a June day, and walked the 
twelve miles, got our dinner from the Brethren, slept at the Har- 
vard Inn, and returned home by another road, the next day. It 
was a satisfactory tramp, and we had good talk on the way, of 
which I set down some record in my journal." 

Longfellow, returned from Hawthorne's funeral, wrote these 
verses, saying of them to Mrs. Hawthorne, "I feel how imperfect 
and inadequate they are; but I trust you will pardon their de- 
ficiencies for the love I bear his memory": — 

"How beautiful it was, that one bright day 

In the long week of rain, 
Though all its splendour could not chase away 
The omnipresent pain. 

"The lovely town was white with apple-blooms, 
And the great elms o'erhead 
Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms 
Shot through with golden thread. 

1 The paragraph which follows was later added to the above by Mr. Emerson. 



34^ "The Saturday Club 

"Across the meadows, by the gray old manse, 
The historic river flowed; 
I was as one who wanders in a trance. 
Unconscious of his road. 

"The faces of familiar friends seemed strange; 
Their voices I could hear, 
And yet the words they uttered seemed to change 
Their meaning to my ear. 

" For the one face I looked for was not there, 
The one low voice was mute; 
Only an unseen presence filled the air 
And baffled my pursuit. 

"Now I look back, and meadow, manse and stream 
Dimly my thought defines; 
I only see — a dream within a dream — 
The hill-top hearsed with pines. 

"I only hear above his place of rest 
Their tender undertone. 
The infinite longings of a troubled breast, 
The voice so like his own. 

"There in seclusion and remote from men 
The wizard hand lies cold, 
Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen 
And left the tale half-told. 

"Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power, 
And the lost clew regain? 
The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower 
Unfinished must remain!" 

Of SO unique a character, withdrawn like a wood-thrush into 
solitude by his instincts, yet curious of the lives and motives of 
men and women, and by them variously conceived of through 
inference from his books, it seems well to present here estimates 
by some who actually knew him, and others who met him for- 
tunately. 

First, that of his nearest college friend,^ Horatio Bridge: — 
"Hawthorne, with rare strength of character, had yet a gentle- 

' Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 



i864 



349 



ness and unselfishness which endeared him greatly to his friends. 
He was a gentleman in the best sense of the word, and he was al- 
ways manly, cool, self-poised, and brave. He was neither morose 
nor sentimental; and though taciturn, was invariably cheerful 
with his chosen friends; and there was much more of fun and frolic 
in his disposition than his published writings indicate." 

In the dedication to Bridge of The Snow Image Hawthorne 
says: — 

"If anybody is responsible for my being at this day an author, 
it is yourself. I know not whence your faith came, but while we 
were lads together at a country college, gathering blueberries in 
study hours under those tall academic pines, or watching the 
great logs as they tumbled along the current of the Androscoggin, 
. . . two idle lads, in short (as we need not fear to acknowledge 
now), doing a hundred things that the Faculty never heard of, or 
else it would have been the worse for us — still, it was your prog- 
nostic of your friend's destiny that he was to be a writer of fiction. 
And a fiction-monger he became in due season. But was there ever 
such a weary delay in obtaining the slightest recognition from the 
public as in my case? I sat down by the wayside of life, like a man 
under enchantment, and a shrubbery sprang up around me, and 
the bushes grew to be saplings, and the saplings became trees, 
until no exit appeared possible through the entangling depths of 
my obscurity. And there, perhaps, I should be sitting at this 
moment, with the moss on the imprisoning tree-trunks, and the 
yellow leaves of more than a score of autumns piled above me, if 
it had not been for you. For it was through your interposition — 
and that, moreover, unknown to himself — that your early friend 
was brought before the public somewhat more prominently than 
theretofore in the first volume of Tzvice-Told Tales. Not a pub- 
lisher in America, I presume, would have thought well enough of 
my forgotten or never-noticed stories to risk the expense of print 
and paper; nor do I say this with any purpose of casting odium 
on the respectable fraternity of booksellers for their blindness to 
my wonderful merit. To confess the truth I doubted of the public 
recognition quite as much as they could do." 

Mr. Fields by his genial character, and encouragement as a 



3S^ The Saturday Club 

publisher, won his way through the outworks of the enchanted 
castle in which Hawthorne was doomed to live. In his Yesterdays 
with Authors, dedicated to this Club, he opens his notes on Haw- 
thorne by a passage in which he speaks of him as "The rarest 
genius America has given to literature — a man who lately so- 
journed in this busy world of ours, but during many years of his 
life 

'Wandered lonely as a cloud,' — 

a man who had, so to speak, a physical affinity with solitude. The 
writings of this author have never soiled the public mind with one 
unlovely image. His men and women have a magic of their own, 
and we shall wait a long time before another arises among us to 
take his place. Indeed, it seems probable no one will ever walk 
precisely the same round of fiction which he traversed with so free 
and firm a step." 

Fields, always kind and helpful to the grateful recluse, knew and 
hesitated not to climb the worn hillside footpath "where he might 
be found in good weather, when not employed in the tower. While 
walking to and fro . . . he meditated and composed innumerable 
romances that were never written, as well as some that were. Here 
he first announced to me his plan of 'The Dolliver Romance,' and, 
from what he told me of his design of the story as it existed in his 
mind, I thought it would have been the greatest of his books. 
An enchanting memory is left of that morning when he laid out 
the whole story before me as he intended to write it. 

"The portrait I am looking at was made by Rowse (an ex- 
quisite drawing), and is a very truthful representation of the head 
of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He was several times painted and 
photographed, but it was impossible for art to give the light and 
beauty of his wonderful eyes. I remember to have heard, in the 
literary circles of London, that, since Burns, no author had ap- 
peared there with so fine a face as Hawthorne." 

And again, "A hundred years ago Henry Vaughan seems almost 
to have anticipated Hawthorne's appearance when he wrote that 
beautiful line, — 

' Feed on the vocal silence of his eye.' " 



i864 



351 



Here are two estimates from good men who had never met our 
romancer. The first is from Dr. James Kendall Hosmer: ^ — 

"Hawthorne portrays, but he draws no lesson any more than 
Shakspeare; his books are pictures of the souls of men, of the sweet 
and wholesome things and also the weakness, the sin, and the 
morbid defect. These having been revealed, the reader is left to 
his own inferences. It is fully made plain that he was a soft- 
hearted man, at any rate in his earlier time. The stories he wrote 
at the outset for children are often full of sweetness and sympathy. 
But as he went on with his work these qualities are less apparent." 

William Allingham, the Irish poet, paid this tribute: — 

"There is in life a drift of dreamy ghostly evanescences moving 
through our subconsciousness; these Nathaniel Hawthorne has 
embodied in words, has actually fixed on paper without dishonor- 
ing a mystic atom of their ethereality. His reticency as a story- 
teller is a great part of the charm; he ever leaves a dubitation 
floating; the bounding lines are touched here and there with mist. 
He is politely evasive when you scrutinize him, yet you cannot 
fail to be aware that not one man in a million observes with such 
keen minuteness." 

Governor Andrew felt that Lincoln must be elected. To Forbes, 
who had written to him, "If I can do any good as a Drummer-up, I 
will go to the world's end," he answered, "What an unspeakably 
dull canvass! It ought to be aroused." He arranged for a war- 
meeting In Faneuil Hall to celebrate Farragut's victory at Mobile 
Bay and Sherman's at Atlanta. His biographer says: "The hall 
was packed. Andrew In his most eloquent impromptu fashion 
struck one quick blow after another. Man of peace as he was, he 
declared that for the last few days he himself had been seized 
by the 'cannon fever.' A ringing letter from Edward Everett 
was read, and Sumner, Wilson, and Boutwell spoke." A successful 
New York meeting followed, and our Governor wrote to the Gov- 
ernors of Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana, urging them to join him in 
Washington, to check the peace arguments of the Republican 
managers. The crying need was " that the President should be 

1 The Last Leaf. 



35^ The Saturday Club 

rescued from the influences which threaten him . . . from those 
who . . . are tempting and pushing him to an unworthy and dis- 
graceful offer to compromise with the leaders of the Rebellion. I 
want the President now to take hold of his occasion, and really 
lead, as he might, the Country by exhibiting in the person of 
him who wields its highest power the genuine representative of 
democratic instincts and principles."^ The momentum that An- 
drew and his friend had gained from their labours of the last two 
weeks continued; and all went well. 

The public events now began to cheer even the doubters and 
strengthened the President during the summer and autumn; 
Grant's steadily advancing aggressive until his forces sat down 
before Petersburg with dogged determination; Sheridan's suc- 
cesses in the Shenandoah Valley; Sherman's demonstration that 
the Confederacy was but a shell; the possession by the Navy of 
the Gulf and the Mississippi; the sinking of the Alabama by the 
Kearsarge in the English Channel; the decision by the Supreme 
Court as to the right of the United States to establish and en- 
force the blockade, admittedly due to Dana's forceful argument; 
and, finally, the triumphant expression of the American people's will 
to uphold the Union and forever free the slave, by Lincoln's reelec- 
tion. To this latter end there can be, I think, hardly a doubt that 
all the members of the Club had worked, or lent their influence. 

But all these great events were an increasing strain on the 
Country. In June, Mr. Forbes, writing to Chase, the Secretary of 
the Treasury, said: "One of our leading manufacturers is sitting 
beside me and says, 'Tell Mr. Chase that I represent about one 
half of the manufacturers in saying that we shall welcome any 
amount of taxation on manufactures, provided import-duties keep 
pace with them, and do not get so high as to defeat their object 
by smuggling.' I say the same for every interest that I am con- 
cerned in — railroads, teas, income. We have got to a pass when 
all who have brains enough to get or keep property cry out even 
in mere selfishness — 'Tax us for our own preservation!'" 

Mr. Robert Ferguson of Carlisle, England, visited Cambridge 
during this summer, and, on his return, gave these recollections 

^ The Life oj John A. Andrew, Governor of Massachusetts, by Henry Greenleaf Pearson. 



i864 



353 



in his book, America during and after the War. He speaks of 
Charles Sumner's close friendship with Longfellow: "An interest- 
ing sight it was to see these two men ... so kindred, and yet so 
different, sitting together on the eve of the great contest which was 
to decide the place of America in the world's history; Sumner, 
with the poet's little daughter nestling in his lap, — for he is a man 
to whom all children come, — discussing some question of Euro- 
pean literature." 

Mr. Ferguson also notes: "Often, too, comes Agassiz with his 
gentle and genial spirit, his childlike devotion to science and his 
eager interest in the politics of the day. . . . We went to one of 
his lectures at the University in the course of which he exhorted 
his hearers to strive to take the same pleasure in the scientific 
discoveries of others as in their own — a noble aim, yet, ah! how 
difficult to attain. And often, too, comes Dana, one of the most 
charming of talkers and more especially with his sea-stories." 

Appleton's journal records that "Just previous to November 28th, 
1864, there was a famous dinner for Sumner and Captain Wins- 
low, of the Kearsarge^ and Longfellow and Appleton were there." 
Possibly, however, this was not the Saturday Club's dinner. 

At Christmas, Longfellow sent to Agassiz a present of wine, 
accompanied by a poem in French, "Noel," which gave great 
joy and was thus acknowledged by him and his wife: — 

My dear Longfellow : — 

I was on my way to your house when, thinking of my mother, 
great tears began to fill my eyes, and fearing to be taken for an 
idiot, I returned home. You, then, were thinking of me at that 
moment; I have just received the proof of it, only an hour ago. 
Thanks, a thousand times, dear friend. I am as proud as happy 
for your present. Proud, because it comes from Longfellow, whom 
I admire; happy, because it comes from Longfellow, whom I love. 
And then also I can let my good mother read my wine, if I can- 
not let her taste it. 

Adieu, dear friend. Accept the good wishes of Noel which I 
make for you. . . . Tout a vousy 

L. Agassiz. 



354 'The Saturday Club 

Mrs. Agassiz also wrote: "Your birthday poem I do not read 
to this day without emotion, and this 'Noel' touches the same 
chord. For, witty and gay and graceful as it is, a loving sym- 
pathy for Agassiz pervades every line. We read it together, not 
without tears as well as laughter; for its affectionate tone moved 
us both. Then it came as if in answer to a thought which Agassiz 
had just expressed — that it seemed so sad to him that his 
'mother should never share in our enjoyment.' Hardly five min- 
utes after, your note was handed him with the verses, all in 
French: and our first exclamation was, 'And the best and loveliest 
of all our Christmas gifts can be fully shared by her.'" 

NOEL 

Envoye a M. Agassiz, La Veille de Noel, 1864, avec un Panier de 
Vins divers. 

The basket of wine which Mr. Longfellow sent to his friend 
with these verses was accompanied by the following note: "A 
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all the house of 
Agassiz! I send also six good wishes in the shape of bottles. Or 
is it wine.? It is both; good wine and good wishes and kind memo- 
ries of you on this Christmas Eve." 

(A translation of the verses was printed by Mr. John E. Nor- 
cross of Philadelphia in a brochure, 1867.) 

V Academie en respect, 

Nonobstant rincorrection 
A la faveur du sujet, 

Ture-lure, 
N'y fera point de rature ; 
Noel ! ture-lure-lure. 

Gui-Barozai 

Quand les astres de Noel 
Brillaient, palpitaient au ciel, 
Six gaillards, et chacun ivre, 
Chantaient gaiment dans le givre, 

• "Bons amis, 
AUons done chez Agassiz!" 

Ces illustres Pelerins 
D'Outre-Mer, adroits et fins. 



i864 

Se donnant des airs de pretre, 
A I'envi se vantaient d'etre, , 

"Bons amis 
De Jean-Rodolphe Agassiz!" 

Oeil-de-Perdrix, grand farceur, 
Sans reproche et sans pudeur, 
Dans son patois de Bourgogne, 
Bredouillait comme un ivrogne, 

" Bons amis, 
J'ai danse chez Agassiz!" 

Verzenay le Champenois, 
Bon Franca is, point New-Yorquois, 
Mais des environs d'Avize, 
Fredonne, a mainte reprise, 

"Bons amis, 
J'ai chante chez Agassiz!" 

A cote marchait un vieux 
Hidalgo, mais non mousseux; 
Dans le temps de Charlemagne 
Fut son pere Grand d'Espagne! 

"Bons amis, 
J'ai dine chez Agassiz!" 

Derriere eux un Bordelais, 
Gascon, s'il en fut jamais, 
Parfume de poesie, 
Riait, chantait, plein de vie, 

" Bons amis, 
J'ai soupe chez Agassiz!" 

Avec ce beau cadet roux, 
Bras dessus and bras dessous, 
Mine altiere et couleur terne, 
Vint le Sire de Sauterne: 

"Bons amis, 
J'ai couche chez Agassiz!" 

Mais le dernier de ces preux 
Etait un pauvre Chartreux, 
Qui disait, d'un ton robuste, 
"Benedictions sur le Juste! 
Bons amis, 
Benissons Pere Agassiz!" 



355 



35^ T'he Saturday Club 

lis arrivent trois a trois, 
Montent I'escalier de bols 
Clopin-clopant! quel gendarme 
Peut permettre ce vacarme, 

Bons amis, 
A la porte d'Agassiz! 

" Ouvrez done, mon bon Seigneur, 
Ouvrez vite et n'ayez peur; 
Ouvrez, ouvrez, car nous sommes 
Gens de bien et gentilshommes, 

Bons amis, 
De la famille Agassiz!" 

Chut, ganaches! taisez-vous! 
C'en est trop de vos glouglous; 
Epargnez aux Philosophes 
Vox abominable strophes! 

Bons amis, 
Respectez mon Agassiz! 

In this year the Club did itself honour by electing John Albion 
Andrew, "Our War-Governor," a member. It was in their eyes, 
and really in fact, a life-saving measure for this noble and de- 
voted man. It was necessary to invade his office and, almost by 
force, bring him away for sustaining food, relaxation, and the 
comfort of a company, loyal and sympathetic, for a few hours. 

With him were chosen Martin Brimmer, a gentleman in the 
best sense of the word, cultivated, kind, and ready for service; 
James Thomas Fields, friendly publisher, hospitable man, and 
pleasant writer, at this time editor of the Atlantic ; and Samuel 
Worcester Rowse, the portrait artist, a silent man, but respected 
and valued by the few who knew him well. 



JOHN ALBION ANDREW 

John Albion Andrew was born in Windham, Maine, May 31, 
1 81 8. His ancestors had been identified with Essex County from 
very early times. His father, Jonathan Andrew, was a native of 
Salem, Massachusetts, lived on a farm, and was the owner of a 
country store and for some time the postmaster. The boy helped 
his father in the office and store and carried on his studies 
chiefly under the direction of his mother who had been a school- 
teacher. He completed his preparation for college at Gorham 
Academy, and entered Bowdoin near the middle of the fresh- 
man year, graduating when he was riineteen years old. Among his 
teachers at Bowdoin was the poet Longfellow. While in college 
he won distinction as a speaker, was the poet of his class at its 
annual meeting in his junior year, and wrote a hymn for the Peace 
Society. The incident in his career at Bowdoin that seemed to 
affect him most strongly at the time, and that very likely had a 
more determining influence on his later career than any other 
event was the presence of George Thompson, the English Abo- 
litionist, who made two visits to Brunswick during Andrew's 
course. He was deeply impressed with the speeches made by 
Thompson, and one of them he could recite almost word for word, 
and in the manner of the speaker. While he was Governor of 
Massachusetts, he said, in a speech in Music Hall, that he remem- 
bered a single sentence and it had adhered to his memory and "will 
last there while memory itself endures." The following is the 
sentence which he then quoted: "I hesitate not to say that in 
Christian America, the land of Sabbath schools, of religious priv- 
ileges, of temperance societies and revivals, there exists the worst 
institution in the world. There is not an institution which the 
sun in the heaven shines upon, so fraught with woe to man as 
American slavery." From that time he was an Abolitionist, but 
an Abolitionist who did not believe in revolution, but aimed to 
secure freedom through constitutional means. After graduation, 
he entered a law office in Boston, and was admitted to the Suffolk 



35^ The Saturday Club 

Bar. He remained in practice long enough to promise distinction 
in his profession, but he very early entered politics. He took a 
conspicuous part in the formation of the Republican Party, but 
never held office until 1858, when he served as a member of the 
Legislature. In the single year in which he filled the office he 
achieved distinction and became one of the foremost men of his 
party in the State. He was the President of the Republican State 
Convention in 1858, was offered a judgeship by Governor Banks 
in the same year, and in i860 was made chairman of the Mas- 
sachusetts Republican delegation to the convention at Chicago 
which nominated Lincoln for the Presidency. He was nominated 
as the Republican candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in 
i860, and elected In November of that year. He held the office 
throughout the Civil War. After his retirement from the Governor- 
ship he resumed the practice of law and never again held public 
office. He died in Boston October 31, 1867. His life was doubtless 
shortened by his labours as War-Governor, and it was the success 
with which he conducted himself in that office that gives him an 
enduring fame. 

It is not easy for one who never saw Andrew to give a speaking 
portrait of him, such as might have been drawn by those who 
were contemporaries of his at the Saturday Club. I have perhaps 
one qualification which may enable me to speak with some discern- 
ment about his service as Governor in the time of war, and I can 
well accept the statement that Governor Andrew was a very busy 
and indeed an overworked man. The burdens which the war put 
upon him of representing the Commonwealth in raising and organ- 
izing her allotment in the armies which fought for the Union were 
very heavy ones. During the first year of the war there were sent 
from the Commonwealth about forty thousand men, which was 
nearly the average number for the four years of its continuance. 
In raising and organizing these soldiers Andrew was easily the 
foremost agency. He was free from some of the cares which come 
to a Governor of the Commonwealth in these times. New Eng- 
land fifty years ago was almost self-supporting, and produced 
nearly food and fuel enough for her own use. To-day we raise only 
a small portion of the food we eat, and we consume in our factories 



yohn Albion Andrew 359 

and homes and upon our railroads about twenty million tons of 
coal each year in Massachusetts alone. The threat to the civil 
population of freezing or of starvation contributes much to the 
anxiety of a Governor, even if his jurisdiction is little more than 
a moral one, with the privilege of making more or less authoritative 
representations to those in Washington, whose will has for the time 
taken the place of natural and indeed of the customary laws. 
According to the reports that have come down to us, the execu- 
tive offices in Governor Andrew's time were almost constantly 
crowded; and I think very little is ventured in saying that a pretty 
large proportion of the crowd was made up of men who were not 
unwilling to receive commissions in the military or civil service. 
He used to welcome the throwing of a friendly rope that would 
drag him out of his office and sometimes he would make the neces- 
sary arrangements himself. There is a story to the effect that he 
sent for General Dale one morning, and, addressing him with 
some excitement, said: "If you do not take me out of this State 
House vi et armis at one o'clock I will have you court-martialled." 
Dale agreed to do this, and at one o'clock he came back, and going 
through the crowd in the office, took Governor Andrew by the 
arm and said: "Come with me, sir." His friends of the Saturday 
Club generously performed a similar service. Mr. John M. Forbes 
said that of all the services he had tried to render the country dur- 
ing the war, the one he most valued was the saving of Governor 
Andrew's life, as he believed. He would go to Parker's and from 
there send a carriage with a note to bring the Governor down from 
the State House to the hotel. Near the beginning of the war, 
Judge Hoar wrote the following letter to the Governor which is 
printed in Pearson's Life of Andrew: — 

Saturday afternoon. 
My dear Fellow: — 

I came to seize you and take you to dine at our Club, where 
we expect Motley, for your soul's salvation or body's at least. 
Send that foolish Council away till Monday. A man who has no 
respect for Saturday afternoon has but one step to take to join in 
abolishing the Fourth of July. The court having considered your 



3^0 "rthe Saturday Club 

case has adjudged that you come. If you cannot come now, 
come down an hour hence to Parker's. 

Yours, 

E. R. Hoar. 

It is told of him on very good authority that at the Harvard 
Commencement in 1863, he promptly went to sleep at the begin- 
ning of the exercises, and Colonel Lee, a member of his staff, gave 
him a friendly nudge at the proper moment so that he might 
recognize the courtesy of the Latin Salutatorian, in that part of 
his address which was directed to the Governor. This friendly act 
gave the Governor opportunity to summon to his countenance 
that appearance of profound interest with which Latin speeches 
at Commencement are generally regarded. 

It is remarkable that Andrew should have been chosen Gover- 
nor after no other official service than that rendered in a single 
term in the Legislature, Promotion like that to-day would be 
almost impossible. Party custom, and especially party machin- 
ery, would prevent anything like that from happening. But the 
Republican Party had just been formed when Andrew went to 
the Legislature. It was a new popular party, with no ruling caste 
in the form of a party machine, and it had none of the debts and 
entanglements that go with a long past. There was a need for 
capable leadership, and he had demonstrated in his brief service 
that he possessed the requisite quality. He had identified himself 
very thoroughly with the Anti-Slavery movement, and was well 
known throughout the State on account of his work in connection 
with it. His position as chairman of the Massachusetts delegation 
at the Chicago Convention gave him a new prominence. Although 
the delegation had not at first voted for Lincoln, yet through 
Andrew as its spokesman, it was able to cast the vote of the 
State for him on the decisive ballot. His excellent judgment of 
men and his freedom from intellectual snobbishness are shown by 
the opinion which he expressed of Lincoln after a trip to Spring- 
field made at that time, and it is quite in contrast with the patron- 
izing attitude taken by some of the leading men of the East, and 
especially of Massachusetts, toward Lincoln until nearly the end 



yohn Albion Andrew 3^1 

of the Civil War. Andrew said of him, "My eyes were never vis- 
ited with the vision of a human face in which more transparent 
honesty and more benignant kindness were combined with more 
of the intellect and firmness which belong to masculine humanity." 
What Andrew saw in Lincoln's face in i860 is what the world sees 
in it to-day. I know of no other opinion so penetrating that was 
given of Lincoln at that time. 

In the heat of war he was so absorbed with his own exacting 
work in Massachusetts that he did not have the requisite breadth 
of outlook to comprehend the complex character of Lincoln's task. 
He was also in constant touch with very good men who were 
impatient over what they thought was the slowness of Lincoln 
regarding emancipation, and he formed opinions which he prob- 
ably afterwards changed, and which would not be sanctioned 
to-day. Just after the Proclamation of Emancipation had been 
issued he wrote: "It is a poor document, but a mighty act, slow, 
somewhat halting, wrong in its delay until January, but grand 
and sublime after all." The verdict of the next age was that never 
was a great message more splendidly timed or more simply and 
fitly phrased. Lincoln had his eye constantly on the "Border 
States" lying between the extreme South and the extreme North. 
Their help was indispensable in carrying on the war for the Union, 
and he was careful not to move faster than the opinion in those 
States would permit him to move. When he finally put forward 
his proclamation that the men held in bondage on the first of the 
following year "shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free," 
the "Border States" supported it as a means for the preservation 
of the Union, and he kept himself at the head of all the States 
that favored union, whether they all favored emancipation or not. 
When an effort was made to influence Lincoln to withdraw after 
he had been renominated for the Presidency in June, 1864, Andrew 
wrote to Greeley, "Mr. Lincoln ought to lead the country, but he 
is essentially lacking in the quality of leadership, which is a gift 
of God and not a device of man." Andrew was directly in the 
shadow of great events as they were happening. He could not 
survey the whole field, and he was without that perspective which 
enables the whole world to-day to recognize the splendid quality of 



3^2 T^he Saturday Club 

Lincoln's leadership. It was natural after the prolonged strain, 
and after levy upon levy of soldiers, with victory still in the dis- 
tance, and when an appeal was made to the reserve endurance of 
the people, as at Valley Forge, and as now in Great Britain and 
France, that there should be criticism of Lincoln in what might 
be termed the higher political circles, which in time of prolonged 
stress are almost always in the wrong. They are apt to be too 
versatile to endure the steady grind, and cling in a dogged way to 
the straight path. But Andrew's fault was only impatience, and 
no man stood more firmly for those great causes which Lincoln 
represented. What he had the vision to see in Lincoln's face 
in i860 was there in even a greater degree than he himself had 
suspected. It was the quality to which in its breadth of view, 
in its well-timed action, and in its ability to comprehend the col- 
lective opinion of the whole people, the ultimate ability of the 
national arms to win both freedom and union was greatly due. 
Andrew possessed indomitable energy, and accomplished marvels 
in forwarding the number of troops the National Government 
required of Massachusetts. He was inspired with a fervent zeal for 
the cause of the Union, and for emancipation. It may fairly be 
claimed for him that he stood at the head of the War-Governors. 
He was a speaker of much force and eloquence, and maintained 
a popularity with the people which more than compensated for 
the opposition which often showed itself in the Legislature. 
Indeed, the Legislature was often antagonistic to him. "Warring- 
ton," the leading newspaper correspondent of that time writing 
from Boston, and who wrote from the vantage-ground of his posi- 
tion as Clerk of the House of Representatives, records more than 
one instance of petty opposition on the part of the Legislature. 
It refused to make a small increase in the salary of his execu- 
tive messenger. "The fact," says Warrington, "that he was the 
Governor's messenger did not help the matter any. I have never 
yet known a Governor popular with the Legislature nor a Legisla- 
ture popular with the Governor after the first year of the guber- 
natorial term." His management of the finances was attacked, 
and when a large loan bill was framed, it contained a clause that 
the finance committee of each branch of the General Court should 



yohn Albion Andrew 



have the execution of the measure along with the Governor and 
Council. Of course Andrew vetoed such a bill and the General 
Court was compelled to yield. Veto followed veto, and there was 
an appearance of war between the Executive and the Legislature. 
Peleg Chandler said that "A leading member of the House and of 
the party in the session of 1862 told me that Governor Andrew 
ought never again to be a candidate for the office of Governor; 
that his reelection was impossible." And that was spoken at a 
time when Andrew was by far the most popular man of his party 
in the State. It was true then, as it usually has been, that the 
cloak-room and the lobby of the two houses were the last places 
in which to gauge public sentiment. But Andrew was fortunate 
in his Council — an institution which can be of great help to a 
Governor at a time like the Civil War; and he numbered among 
his Councillors men like Thomas Talbot, afterwards Governor, 
Zenas Crane, and F. W. Bird. 

His membership in the Saturday Club was all too brief. He 
was not elected until 1864, only three years before his death, but 
he had probably been the guest of the Club on many occasions, 
and he nowhere had more steadfast support than in the circle of 
its members. The best opinion of his time was wholly in his favour. 
He had a resolute, lighting nature which showed itself at the bar, 
and constantly while he was Governor, and of which a very good 
instance was seen in his collision with Jefferson Davis when An- 
drew was summoned to testify before a committee of the Senate 
appointed to investigate the John Brown raid. 

He had a very genuine sympathy for poor people or for those 
who were the victims of injustice. 

Mr. James K. Hosmer gives a good picture of Andrew in the 
Executive Office, and despite its length, what he says is well worth 
quoting: — 

" Early in September, 1 862, 1 went to Boston with a deputation of 
Selectmen from four towns of the Connecticut Valley. They had 
an errand, and my function was, as an acquaintance of the Gov- 
ernor, to introduce them. . . . Our errand was to ask that in a regi- 
ment about to be raised in two western counties the men might 
have the privilege of electing the officers, a pernicious practice 



3^4 T'he Saturday Club 

which had been in vogue, and always done much harm. But in 
those days our eyes were not open. Entering the Governor's 
room in the State House with my farmer Selectmen, I found it 
densely thronged. Among the civilians were many uniforms, and 
men of note, in the field and out, stood there waiting. Charles 
Sumner presently entered the room, dominating the company by 
his commanding presence, that day apparently in full vigour, alert, 
forceful, with a step before which the crowd gave way, his master- 
fulness fully recognized and acknowledged. He took his seat with 
the air of a prince of the blood at the table, close at hand to the 
Chief Magistrate. Naturally abashed, but feeling I was in for a 
task which must be pushed through, I made my way to the other 
elbow of the Governor, who, looking up from his documents, rec- 
ognized me politely and asked what I wanted. I stated our case, 
that a deputation from Franklin and Hampshire Counties desired 
the privilege for the men of the new regiment about to be raised 
to elect their own officers, and not be commanded by men whom 
they did not know. 'Where are your Selectmen. '*' said Governor 
Andrew, rising and pushing back his chair with an energy which 
I thought ominous. My companions had taken up a modest 
position in a far corner. When I pointed them out, the Governor 
made no pause, but proceeded to pour upon them and me a tor- 
rent of impassioned words. He said that we were making trouble, 
that the Country was in peril, and that while he was trying to 
send every available man to the front in condition to do effective 
work, he was embarrassed at home by petty interference with his 
efforts. ' I have at hand soldiers who have proved themselves brave 
in action, have been baptized in blood and fire. They are fit 
through character and experience to be leaders, and yet I cannot 
give them commissions because I am blocked by this small and 
unworthy spirit of hindrance.' For some minutes the warm out- 
burst went on. The white, beardless face flushed up under the 
curls, and his hands waved in rapid gesture. *A capital speech, 
your Excellency,' cried out Sumner, 'a most capital speech!' and 
he led the way in a peal of applause in which the crowd in the 
chamber universally joined, and which must have rung across 
Beacon Street to the Common far away. My feeble finger had 



yohn Albion Andrew 3^5 

touched the button which brought this unexpected downpour, 
and for the moment I was unpleasantly in the limelight. 'Now in- 
troduce me to your Selectmen,' said Governor Andrew, stepping 
to my side. I led the way to the corner to which the delegation had 
retreated, and presented my friends in turn. His manner changed. 
He was polite and friendly, and when, after a handshaking, he 
went back to his table, we felt we had not understood the situation 
and that our petition should have been withheld. For my part I 
enlisted at once as a private and went into a strenuous campaign." 
But no more fitting and no juster estimate of him has been 
uttered, so far as I know, than that given by one of the voices of 
the Saturday Club — one of the voices to which all that is best 
in the country will always delight to listen: "To you more than 
to any other man," Charles Eliot Norton wrote to Andrew in 
1866, "is due the fact that through these years of trial Massachu- 
setts has kept her old place of leadership. Through you she has 
given proof of her constancy to those principles to which she was 
from the beginning devoted. You have helped her to be true to 
her ideal. You have represented all that is best in her spirit and 
her aims. There are no better years in her history than those with 
which your name will be forever associated in honour." 

S. W. McC. 



MARTIN BRIMMER 

Perhaps the most significant triumph of mind over matter is 
when an indomitable and beautiful spirit overcoming the diffi- 
culties of an imperfect body becomes a power for good. The frail 
vessel richly laden weathered the gales and steered clear of the 
reefs on which many another barque had come to grief, and ar- 
rived safely and triumphantly in port. 

Martin Brimmer, the fourth to bear that name through an 
honoured life, was born in Boston, December 9, 1829. Had he, like 
Marcus Aurelius, examined himself and his ancestors to see from 
whom his characteristics came, perhaps he would have found, 
among other things, that his public spirit came from his father and 
his maternal grandfather, both of them eminent philanthropists; 
that his ability to bear a creditable part in the political life of his 
day was inherited from his father, at one time Mayor of Boston; 
and in regard to his great-grandfather, who emigrated from Osten, 
near Hamburg, to America about 1723, his great-grandmother, a 
French Huguenot named Sigourney, and his grandmother Sarah 
Watson, of Plymouth, that, as Mr. George S. Hale said in his 
memoir, "The quiet reserve and solidity of his German ancestor 
were enlivened and made attractive by the gracious elegance of 
manner derived from his French descent; his Pilgrim origin dis- 
closed itself in a New England conscience, tempered by a cheer- 
ful Huguenot faith." 

Martin Brimmer's mother died when he was three years old. 
He was a delicate boy suffering from a club-foot. His health was 
so frail that sending him to school was out of the question, and 
he was educated by tutors. His father was a rich man, and his 
mother's father, Mr. James Wadsworth, owned a vast estate at 
Geneseo, New York, where the boy used to visit his grandfather, 
and where his love of nature grew. 

He entered Harvard College at the age of sixteen and became 
a member of the class of 1849, then in its Sophomore year. He 
led his class in Latin and Greek, took many prizes, and at grad- 



Martin Brimmer 367 

uation received highest honours. He was one of the leading spirits 
in his class, though on account of his lameness he was obliged to 
forego the pleasures of athletic games. He travelled in Europe, 
then returned to the Harvard Law School, and was admitted to 
the bar. At about this time he worked for a while in a law office 
in Boston. Mr. Samuel Eliot wrote, "His fellow-student in the 
office says that on a good-natured remonstrance as to the late- 
ness of his appearance, he replied, 'You don't know my hours; 
they begin at twelve and end at five minutes after twelve.'" Soon 
after he went to Europe again, where he found a field of study that 
was more congenial in the form of art. The anecdote above quoted 
is not characteristic of his general attitude toward work. It merely 
means that the law was not for him. He was a hard worker all his 
life. 

At the age of about twenty-six, in 1855 or 1856, he went on a 
chivalrous expedition to Kansas on behalf of the New England 
Emigrant Aid Society, "which played no unimportant part in 
rescuing from slavery the Territory of Kansas at the time that 
the Missouri River was closed by the border ruffians to the emi- 
grants from the other States." He accompanied the Director 
of the Society to inspect and to care for the needs of the patri- 
otic settlers in that region. He himself was a contributor to, but 
not an officer of, the Society. They travelled on horseback with 
an old army ambulance, probably for the camping equipment; 
sometimes "slept in strange beds, ate strange meals, and encoun- 
tered strange companions." Mr. Brimmer was described by his 
fellow-traveller as "never complaining, never over-excited or over- 
depressed, a delightful companion, with fairness, cheerfulness, 
unselfishness, and quickness of apprehension. 'The only time,' 
the Director writes, 'Brimmer referred to his lameness, was on 
our returning at night from a visit, when, having a ravine and a 
brook to cross, he said that a very thick-soled shoe was sometimes 
useful in keeping one's foot dry.'" 

In 1855, he was married to Miss Mary Ann Timmins, of Bos- 
ton. Their domestic life was quite unusually happy, though they 
never had children. Mr. Chapman gives a vivid picture of Mrs. 
Brimmer in his sketch of her husband. Mr. Brimmer would fain 



3^8 The Saturday Club 

have gone to the war had he not been unfit for military service 
on account of his lameness. But he did enter politics for a while. 
In 1889, he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representa- 
tives as a Republican, and was reelected more than once; and in 
1864, was elected to the Senate. He was a competent and effective 
member of the Legislature and faithfully performed his duties. 
Mr. George S. Hale says: "I think his name will be found among 
the yeas and nays on every roll-call. There never could arrive an 
occasion when he did not have the courage of his convictions. 
I think he did not know how to dodge." Mr. Hale believes that 
he bore an important part in carrying through the measure that 
made the Massachusetts Institute of Technology possible. 

After he felt that he had done his duty by the Commonwealth 
in political life, he turned to the fields of art, education, and phi- 
lanthropy, which were much more congenial. Only once again 
was he tempted into the lists. Leopold Morse was running for 
Congress in 1876; and a number of public-spirited men succeeded 
in inducing Mr. Brimmer to run against him. Mr. Morse won, 
and Mr. Brimmer was never again persuaded to run for a political 
office. 

In 1869 began the chief work of his life. He helped in drawing 
up the plan for the Museum of Fine Arts and presided at the 
first meeting. In the spring of 1870, he became the first president, 
and held this office for more than twenty-five years. To his de- 
votion, intelligence, and generosity the Museum will always owe 
a great debt. 

The other great institution with which Mr. Brimmer's name is 
associated is Harvard College. "In 1864 when he was only 
thirty-four years old," he became a Fellow. "The majority of the 
members of the Corporation at this time had graduated before he 
was born. He was a Fellow of the University Corporation from 
1864 to 1868, a member of the Board of Overseers from 1870 to 
1877, and again a Fellow of the Corporation from 1877 to his 
death." 

He was actively connected with many other public works in 
Boston, such as the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Provi- 
dent Association, the Farm School, the Perkins Institution for the 



Martin Brimmer 369 

Blind, the Cooperative Building Association, and many others. 
He was a vestryman of Trinity Church and a close friend of 
Phillips Brooks, whom he earnestly advocated for the position of 
Bishop of Massachusetts. 

Mr. Brimmer wrote well. His book on the History, Religion, 
and Art of Egypt is charming. Though he made no pretence of 
being a profound scholar, and said he wrote his book with the help 
of his niece [as amanuensis] during a journey in Egypt, merely 
"for their own instruction," as he put it, and with no intention 
of publication, yet the little volume is not only readable and 
delightful, but is of real value as giving in brief and vivid form a 
picture of what we owe to ancient Egypt. In later years he was 
persuaded to publish the volume, which appeared in beautiful 
form. Mr. Brimmer also made two thoughtful addresses presently 
to be referred to. 

He was chosen a member of the Saturday Club in 1864. He 
enjoyed the meetings and attended them frequently. 

In the winter of 1893, he had a heavy fall and remained uncon- 
scious for several hours. He was never quite so strong again. 
On January 14, 1896, he died quietly at his home on Beacon Street. 

These bare facts alone would fail to give a just impression of his 
peculiar characteristics as a man. We happily have the recorded 
memories of him by men who had the privilege of knowing him well. 

As Mr. Brimmer was a leader in the foundation of one of the 
first and greatest museums in America, his thought on museums 
is interesting as showing his "cr^^o." In the Wellesley address,* 
in 1889, he "shows the importance of studies in art, and unfolds 
the causes which promote the arts"; and in his Bowdoin address* 
of 1894, "the governing thoughts are that art is a language, that 
it is addressed to us, and that, if we do not respond, the language 
has failed by our fault." In the same line of thought he once wrote 
to a friend, "Museums and libraries do something for those who 
are reaching out; they do not of themselves reach in." And again, 
"I have been reading a little of Green^ and have increased appetite 

* At the opening of the Farnsworth Art School at Wellesley. 

* At the opening of the Art Museum of Bowdoin College in 1894. 

' Thomas Hill Green, author of Prolegomena to Ethics, and Lectures on the Principles of 
Political Obligation. 



27^ The Saturday Club 

for more. Is not this condensed truth the lesson which man learns 
from external nature : he finds that it is only what he gives to it that 
he receives from it, yet by some mysterious affinity it evokes what 
he has to give, and then it bears witness with his own spirit that 
what he gives is not his own, but inspired from above?" 

Mr. Brimmer, in his article in the American Architect and Build- 
ing News, October 30, 1880, on the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 
speaks of the history of the foundation of the Museum. He de- 
fines what he thinks should be its general aims. The catholicity of 
his taste is shown by these words: "The museums of to-day open 
their doors to all the world, and the scope of their collections has 
broadened to meet the public needs. None the less, however, are 
the best pictures and marbles their prizes. ... If modern criticism 
has proved anything, it has proved that an artist's work can be 
well understood only through a knowledge of the artist's surround- 
ings. The influence of his masters, the influence of his contempo- 
raries, throw a great light upon his achievement. Hence, the need 
of a selection in which the historical sequence shall be borne in 
mind, in which the picture or the statue shall stand, not for itself 
alone, but for the time and the influence which it represents. 
Judgments of intrinsic merit, too, though they be the main tests of 
value, are nowhere infallible. They vary somewhat with individual 
tastes; they vary more with the shifting tendencies of the time. 
The critic of forty years ago did not clearly foresee the standards 
of this generation, and it is possible that the judgments of the 
critics of to-day may be passed by somewhat slightingly by his 
successor forty years hence." He urges the duty of the Museum to 
represent the local artists, Copley, Stuart, Allston, Hunt, and 
others. 

He himself was a great admirer of Jean Fran 9013 Millet. Mr. 
William Hunt, after visiting Millet at Barbizon and becoming in- 
terested in his work, showed it to Mr. Brimmer, who bought the 
"Sheep Shearers," to Millet's great relief and encouragement. In 
later years in his Wellesley address he paid an eloquent tribute to 
Millet. 

In this address Mr. Brimmer says: "So accustomed have men 
become to books as the storehouses of facts and ideas, so limited 



Martin Brimmer 371 

are we to the use of words as the only vehicle of thought, that 
we have lost touch with the earlier and more natural mode of 
expression by images." And again: "The parallel of ugliness with 
vice, and of beauty with holiness, will be more largely understood 
among all kinds and conditions of men." He further asks the ques- 
tion : " Why, after all, is art worth while 1 " He replies that not only 
do we increase our possibilities by cultivating our taste and our 
sense of beauty, but that deeper issues are involved; he says that 
we have only to place ourselves before one of the greatest master- 
pieces of the world and "we shall feel that something within us 
is touched which makes cultivation of taste and skill seem but 
mere playing with the surface of things. And when, led on from 
one great work to another, we begin to discover their relation to 
each other, and to life in the midst of which they were produced, 
then the narrow bounds we have set up fall away, and a wide 
horizon opens around us on every side. We see that style and 
execution and design are but the foreground of the scene before 
us, are but the way through which the mental vision reaches 
out to great ends. We see that Art, in its widest and truest 
sense, is not mere luxury or decoration, but an expression of the 
hopes, the faith, the life of mankind. Through visible images 
our eyes penetrate to the inner thoughts of men of distant races 
and remote periods. We contemplate the ideas that filled their 
minds, the feelings that impelled them, the aspirations in which 
they found support. We trace the instincts of race, the rise and 
fall of national spirit, the growth and decay of religions that have 
passed away. We behold the ideals of beauty In every age and na- 
tion as they came forth from the hand of those men who expressed 
them. best. We follow the contending influences which led men 
now this way, now that, and we mark the impress which the man 
of genius stamped upon his time. The merest glance over the 
field Is enough to assure us that the end of the study of Art is the 
knowledge of humanity itself on a side not less instructive or in- 
spiring than we find in the study of literature or of history." 

In these days when every one is too busy to sit still, and most 
people are too busy to think about anything that does not im- 
mediately concern their actual day's work, a glimpse of Mr. 



372 ^he Saturday Club 

Brimmer's social life given by a friend,^ comes like a fresh breath 
from across the waters, bringing suggestive odours which tell of 
other days: "With his marriage to a dear friend my friendship 
with Mr. Brimmer soon deepened into intimacy; and as my mind 
goes back to those early days, what memories I recall of that 
delightful time! Once more I am seated at the ever-hospitable 
board on Beacon Street, with the bright circle that was wont to 
gather there, or on the piazzas at Beverly, and among the ferns 
and rocks and pine-needles of Witch Wood, we once more talk 
with youthful freshness of all that most interests our minds or is 
dearest to our hearts! At Beverly, as in Boston, rare spirits would 
often gather — Tom Appleton, Frank Parkman, William Hunt, 
Frank Parker, and others; and le causeur des Lundis, Sainte-Beuve 
himself, might sometimes have envied those long, inspiring talks, 
with the pine trees whispering overhead and the surge of the sum- 
mer sea not far away! And then in the autumn evenings what mo- 
ments were those when Mr. Brimmer would read aloud, to a chosen 
few, some page from Shakspeare, or Dante, or Sainte-Beuve, or 
Musset, his beautiful voice and rhythmical cadence adding a 
musical charm to the 'winged words'! This reminds me of our 
long dispute — the only one — over Music itself, Mr. Brimmer 
declaring that he was indifferent to it; in fact, he would laugh- 
ingly add, 'It almost amounts at times to a dislike'; I always 
contending that the rhythm and the cadence of his reading dis- 
proved his statement. Years afterward, when he confessed his 
delight in Wagner, and I instantly proclaimed my victory in our 
long dispute, he answered that the trouble had not been with his 
musical taste, but with the inferiority of all musical composi- 
tion up to Wagner's time!" 

Mr. Samuel Eliot describes his hospitality thus: "He was dis- 
tinguished as a host. Nowhere in our neighbourhood were stran- 
gers more generously or more gracefully entertained. As a host 
he shone by his simplicity, as well as by his power to converse 
with every guest within his doors." He was a delightful fellow- 
traveller also. "Intercourse with him was the more attractive 
because of the impression that beneath the quiet surface there 

^ Mr. John Jay Chapman in his Memories and Milestones. 



Martin Brimmer 373 

was untold depth." Some one speaks of him as a modern Mae- 
cenas. 

Mr. John Jay Chapman, who married Mr. Brimmer's niece, 
gives the following picture: "He was the best of old Boston; for he 
was not quite inside the Puritan tradition and was a little sweeter 
by nature and less sure he was right than the true Bostonian is. 
He was a lame, frail man, with fortune and position; and one felt 
that he had been a lame, frail boy, lonely, cultivated, and nursing 
an ideal of romantic honour. There was a knightly glance in his 
eye and a seriousness in his deep voice that told of his living, and 
of his having lived always, in a little Camelot of his own. He 
was not quixotic, but he was independent. There were portcullises 
and moats and flowered gardens around him. He was humble with 
a kind of Hidalgo humility — the humility of a magnificent im- 
poverished Portuguese Duke. There was nothing sanctimonious 
about his mind, and this is what really distinguished him from the 
adjacent Bostonian nobility." 

Contrasting him with the conservative Bostonians of Puritan 
descent, Mr. Chapman continues: — 

"There was in Mr. Brimmer nothing of that austere look which 
comes from holding on to property and standing pat. And besides 
this he was warm; not, perhaps, quite as warm as the Tropics, 
but very much warmer than the average Beacon Street mantel- 
pieces were. He would discourse and laugh heartily about these 
mantel-pieces — instead of turning haughty, and assuming a 
looked of profaned intimacy, if any one noticed the absence of 
fire in them. There was a spark of fight, too, in Mr. Brimmer; 
as I found to my cost once, when I received a letter from him be- 
ginning, 'Sir,' in the old duelling style, and more beautiful in 
its chirography than anything a merely democratic age can pro- 
duce. . . . Mr. Brimmer's cultivation was, as has been seen, not 
of the Bostonian brand. He had no pose of any kind, no ambition. 
His cultivation was unconscious. 

"He was as much at home with a Turk as with an Englishman, 
and had the natural gravity which marks the Asiatic. He could, 
upon occasion, be severe and masterful; and at such times his thin 
jaw would protrude beneath his falling moustache. In that age the 



374 The Saturday Club 

wandering Englishman of fashion was apt to drop in upon an 
American dinner party in his traveUing jacket. One such offender 
Mr. Brimmer caused to ascend in the elevator to become arrayed 
in a suit from the antique and honourable wardrobe of the house, 
before being admitted to the feast. I am sure that the host spoke 
with the sweetness of King Arthur and Galahad in making the 
suggestion to the stranger. 

"Mr. Brimmer's most powerful quality was his patience. He 
could endure and go on enduring almost to eternity. To a man of 
his delicate physique and inner sensitiveness, the jolting of life 
must ever have been painful; and he seemed often to be in pain; 
but whether it was physical pain or mental pain was hard to 
guess. Of all the virtues, the virtue patience is most foreign to 
youth: his power of patience impressed me and awed me. 

"... The Brimmers had no children; but their household, and 
indeed the whole little kingdom that went with it, was greatly 
warmed and caused to glow by the presence of the two Italian 
nieces. . . . These two girls, then, who looked like figures out of 
the Vita Nuova^ brought with them from Italy the daring of a coun- 
try where a woman is as good as a man, while they inherited in 
their own natures and from their American ancestors a sort of 
Anglo-Saxon piety. . . . These young girls hung garlands about 
the declining years of their aunt and uncle, being as devoted as 
daughters could have been." 

Several of those who knew Mr. Brimmer bear witness to the 
clearness of his intelligence and the sensitiveness of his instincts, 
which made him a particularly valuable man as the presiding 
officer at a meeting. He understood more quickly than others the 
elements of a situation, and hence was able to be the controlling 
force. The description might be applied to Mr. Brimmer which 
John Hay gave of Abraham Lincoln, when he said that he "could 
see around the corner while the rest were looking down the street." 

Mr. Brimmer was a warm friend of Governor Andrew and of 
many of the most distinguished men in Boston. The number of 
eloquent tributes to him after his death, which evidently came 
from the heart, bear witness to his place in the community. 

President Eliot, who knew him so well, said: "In spite of his 



Martin Brimmer 375 

delicacy of body, no comrade of his youth, and no witness of his 
maturer life, ever accused Martin Brimmer of lack of courage, 
decision, or persistence. He was always gentle, but always firm." 
He "was as brave and resolute as he was gentle; a man who, 
living, illustrated all the virtues and graces of friend, husband, 
counsellor, citizen, and public servant, and, dying, left behind 
him no memory of look, thought, or deed that is not fragrant and 
blessed." 

Mr. Hale spoke of the cloudless serenity of Mr. Brimmer's 
nature; and of his poise and balance which were so perfect that 
in a measure they concealed his size; "In Johnsonian phrase, 
'Because we miss the nodosity of a Hercules we do not see the 
vigour of an Apollo.' ... In this rare combination of qualities 
lay the secret of his influence — an influence that followed him 
into every circle that he entered, whether public or private; and 
even in these enfranchised days, when the voice of authority 
seems dead, Mr. Brimmer's voice was listened to and his opinions 
accepted as no one else's I have ever known. And yet I greatly 
doubt if he ever willingly proffered his advice to any one; but with 
what modesty, what diffidence it was given when asked for! — and 
asked for it was by the highest and the humblest, each one feeling 
that they had in him a friend. Truly Le monde est aux gens calmes ! " 

In an anonymous editorial in the Transcript occurs this pas- 
sage: "Phillips Brooks in one of his eloquent passages drew a 
splendid distinction between works of creation and those of de- 
struction, pointing out the essential quietness of one and noise 
of the other, and showing how the destroyer inevitably held at- 
tention to himself by his methods, while the creator laboured in 
silence till his work was done, when it spoke for itself. It was to 
this class that Mr. Brimmer preeminently belonged." 

Rev. E. Winchester Donald thus ended the memorial sermon 
in which he had not previously mentioned his name, "With you 
I join in thanking God for the good example of that gentle spirit, 
that strong character, that noble unselfishness, that rare refine- 
ment, which, for threescore and six years, shone undimmed in 
the life of God's soldier, servant, saint — Martin Brimmer." 

E. W. F. 



JAMES THOMAS FIELDS 

The book in which the overflowing personality of James T. 
Fields is communicated most abundantly to a later generation, 
his Yesterdays with Authors^ contains this dedication: "Inscribed 
to my fellow-members of the Saturday Club." For the present 
purpose these words are taken from a copy of the twenty-fourth 
edition of the book, dated 1883; it was first published in 187 1. As 
editor of the Atlantic Monthly from 1861 to 1871, as a public lec- 
turer of extreme popularity, most of all as a publisher who com- 
bined in a rare measure the relations of business and of friendship 
with the authors for whom he acted — that galaxy of men of 
letters who made the Victorian period what it was in America 
as notably as in England — Fields was himself one of the con- 
spicuous figures of his time. His several small volumes of verse 
do not reveal him as a creative writer of the first order. One rf 
his homely lyrics, the "Ballad of the Tempest," has proved a 
hardy survivor from all his metrical pages, and therefore may be 
taken to represent the verdict of his countrymen upon his poetry. 
It is a verdict by no means wholly just, for in many another lyric 
and "occasional poem" he struck, with much facility, and often 
with felicity, a note that was highly popular in the central dec- 
ades of the past century. His lectures and books which grew out 
of his personal relations with his contemporaries who still live 
in their writings were his more important contribution to the 
records of his period. But what counted for still more was the very 
fact of these relationships — a fact which found expression in the 
dedication of his principal work to his "fellow-members of the 
Saturday Club." 

His name stands fourteenth on the list of those elected after the 
fourteen "members before 1857," the year of his election being 
1864. He was then forty-eight years old. Portsmouth, New 
Hampshire, was his birthplace; December 31, 1816, the date of 
his birth. His Portsmouth boyhood, passed under the influences 
of a devoted mother, a shipmaster's widow, of excellent teachers, 



I 



yames 'Thomas Fields Z77 

both secular and religious, of spirited playmates, and of all the 
books which the local Athenaeum and private shelves could afford, 
ended when he was fourteen. At that age he received the follow- 
ing letter, which opened for him the doors of the "Old Corner 
Bookstore" in Boston: — 

Brookline, March 4, 183 1. 

I have procured you a place, James, in Carter & Hendee's 
Bookstore. I consider this the best situation in Boston in this 
line of business. Mr. Carter says that a boy, who Is good, active, 
and industrious, and desirous of giving satisfaction to his em- 
ployers, may be sure of getting forward, and of doing well in 
this business when he comes of age. 

If you like the trade and are pleased with the place, you can 
come as soon as your mother pleases. The gentlemen with whom 
you are to live are excellent young men, and very much respected 
in Boston. They do a great deal of business, and you must do 
your best to please them, and if you succeed in this you will be 
amply rewarded in their friendship. You will go, at first, on 
trial. 

Very truly, your friend, 

Rich. Sullivan. 

Master James Fields. 

This letter served as an introduction to far more than a " place " 
in a bookstore. It could have done no more than that but for the 
remarkable capacity of young Fields to turn his opportunities 
to the best account. Some reminiscences of him by Edwin P. 
Whipple in these earliest years reveal him as a frequenter of the 
Boston Mercantile Library Association, "inflamed," like Whipple 
himself, "with a passionate love of literature and by a cordial 
admiration of men of letters," discussing and trying his hand at 
various forms of verse, and already beginning to assemble a library 
of his own. Another species of education came to him through 
Mr. Hendee's having a box at the theatre and Inviting one or 
more of the boys in the shop to occupy it with him every night. 
In this way it is recorded that Fields "saw the elder Booth, Fanny 



37^ T^he Saturday Club 

Kemble as Juliet, her father, and in short all the good actors who 
came to America at that time." In 1838, when Fields was twenty- 
one, he "pronounced" the anniversary poem before the Mercan- 
tile Library Association, as he did again in 1848. On the first of 
these occasions Edward Everett was the orator of the day, on the 
second, Daniel Webster. At about the time of delivering the first 
Mercantile Library poem he became a member of the firm of 
Ticknor, Reed & Fields, soon to take the more familiar name of 
Ticknor & Fields and to build up the extraordinary list of publi- 
cations which have so enriched the catalogues of the publishing 
firms succeeding to their business. The achievement thus repre- 
sented could have been wrought only through the power of person- 
ality. Thisy we must believe from a mass of testimony, was what 
Fields especially brought to the enterprise. A credible witness 
may well be cited — George William Curtis, writing in Harper's 
Monthly soon after the death of the subject of his reminiscence: — 
"The annals of publishing, and the traditions of publishers 
in this country, will always mention the little Corner Book-Store 
in Boston as you turn out of Washington Street into School 
Street, and those who recall it in other days will always remember 
the curtained desk at which poet and philosopher and historian 
and divine, and the doubting, timid, young author, were sure to see 
the bright face and to hear the hearty welcome of James T. 
Fields. What a crowded, busy shop it was, with the shelves full 
of books, and piles of books upon the counters and tables, and 
loiterers tasting them with their eyes, and turning the glossy 
new pages — loiterers at whom you looked curiously, suspecting 
them to be makers of books as well as readers. You knew that 
you might be seeing there in the flesh and in common clothes the 
famous men and women whose genius and skill made the old 
world a new world for every one upon whom their spell lay. Sud- 
denly, from behind the green curtain, came a ripple of laughter, 
then a burst, a chorus; gay voices of two or three or more, but 
always of one — the one who sat at the desk and whose place was 
behind the curtain, the literary partner of the house, the friend 
of the celebrated circle which has made the Boston of the middle 
of this century as justly renowned as the Edinburgh of the close 



Ii 



yames Thomas Fields 379 

of the last century, the Edinburgh that saw Burns, but did not 
Icnow him. That curtained corner in the Corner Book-Store is 
remembered by those who knew it in its great days, as Beaumont 
recalled the revels at the immortal tavern : — 

'What things have we seen 
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been 
So nimble and so full of subtle flame, 
As if that every one from whence they came 
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest!' 

What merry peals ! What fun and chaff and story! Not only the 
poet brought his poem there still glowing from his heart, but the 
lecturer came from the train with his freshest touches of local 
humour. It was the exchange of wit, the Rialto of current good 
things, the hub of the hub. 

"And it was the work of one man. Fields was the genius loci. 
Fields, with his gentle spirit, his generous and ready sympathy, 
his love of letters and of literary men, his fine taste, his delightful 
humour, his business tact and skill, drew, as a magnet draws Its 
own, every kind of man, the shy and the elusive as well as the gay 
men of the world and the self-possessed favourites of the people. 
It was his pride to have so many of the American worthies upon his 
list of authors, to place there, If he could, the English poets and 
'belles-lettres' writers, and then to call them all personal friends." 

Another bit of testimony may be taken from an unpublished 
letter of Cornelius C. Felton, found in a collection of autographs 
preserved for many years in the library of Mrs. Fields. Writing 
in 1849 to thank Fields for his newly published volume of poems, 
Felton said: — 

"It has often seemed to me that the position of a man of busi- 
ness, with literary tastes and talents, is one of rare happiness. 
The union of the two elements of life works out a more manifold 
experience than either alone, and gives richer materials for thought. 
While business steadies and utilizes life, the cultivation of letters 
embellishes and dignifies it. A merely literary life, with few ex- 
ceptions, is neither happy nor respectable; a merely business life 
may be very happy and respectable, but it wants the heightening 
touches of an idealizing imagination. It is imperfect and one- 



3^0 The Saturday Club 

sided. Boston is remarkable for the number of men who unite the 
two. This is especially the case with the younger class, to which 
you belong; and I hope you will always continue to set an ex- 
ample of the entire practicability of blending with commercial 
pursuits, the habit of literary labour, and the elegant tastes that 
naturally connect themselves therewith." 

The ideal set forth in these words is particularly applicable to a 
man of business whose commerce is with books. Its fulfilment in 
the person of Fields goes far to explain his success as a publisher. 
Because he was not merely a man of business he could establish 
a sympathy and understanding between his firm and the authors 
with whom it dealt which led to the following expressions in 
letters found also among the Fields autographs. On November 
29, 1855, Robert Browning wrote to Fields: "I take advantage of 
the opportunity of the publication in the United States of my 
*Men and Women,' — for printing which, you, through being 
more righteous than the Law, have liberally remunerated me, — 
to express my earnest desire that the power of publishing in 
America this and every subsequent work of mine may rest ex- 
clusively with you and your house." A few months later, March 
18, 1856, Tennyson wrote: "From you alone among American 
publishers have I ever received any remuneration for my books 
and I would wish therefore that with you alone should rest the 
right of publishing them in future." 

The story of Fields's visit to Hawthorne in Salem and his bear- 
ing away with him the manuscript of The Scarlet Letter, drawn as 
if by necromancy from the furtive author, is one of the most 
familiar instances of his friendly handling of a man of genius to 
the lasting profit both of the writer and of the world. In a diary 
of Mrs. Fields is found an entry, May 4, 1868, excellently sug- 
gesting the regard in which he was held by his Olympian friends: 
"Mr. Emerson has returned from New York. He popped into 
James's room, saying, 'How is the guardian and maintainer of us 
all.^'" Dr. Holmes gave a characteristic expression to a kindred 
feeling when he said, in a conversation also recorded by Mrs. 
Fields: "By the way, Mr. Fields, do you appreciate the position 
you hold in our time? There never was anything like it. Why, 



yames Thomas Fields 3^1 

I was nothing but a roaring kangaroo when you took me in hand 
and I thought it was the right thing to stand up on my hind legs, 
but you combed me down and put me in proper shape." 

In these journals of Mrs. Fields, of which she left far the greater 
portion unpublished, the interests of her husband are constantly 
reflected. To a singular degree his interests were hers. In 1850 
Fields had married Eliza Willard, a daughter of Simon Willard. 
She lived but a few months after their marriage. In November, 
1854, he married her cousin, Annie Adams, a daughter of Dr. 
Zabdiel Boylston Adams, a beautiful girl of twenty, keenly re- 
sponsive to all the intellectual, spiritual, and personal influences 
animating the circle of which Fields was so vital a member. They 
soon established themselves in a house on Charles Street, which 
for sixty years — more than thirty of them extending beyond the 
lifetime of Fields himself — was the scene of a hospitality which 
so many early members of the Saturday Club enjoyed and en- 
riched that some mention of it must be made in this place. In- 
deed, the Charles Street house, furnished with its collection of 
precious books, pictures, mementoes of valued friendships, no 
more richly than with the friends themselves, was an integral 
part of the life of James T. Fields. Returning to it from meetings 
of the Saturday Club, it was evidently the pleasant practice of its 
master to relate to its mistress the talk in which he had just taken 
part; and it was hers to set it down from time to time in her diaries. 
In her own printed pages she has had some recourse to these 
records of an earlier day. From unpublished entries the following 
passages are copied — not so much for the intrinsic value of their 
content as for the impression they may yield of the flavour and 
spirit of the Club some fifty years ago: — 

"October 28, 1865. Meeting of Jamie's Club, where he was 
much amused by a story of Lowell's about a parrot in Cambridge 
who had become highly educated and was heard to go and 
deliver political addresses to the ducks. When he first came to 
the ladies who have given him this fine education, he could say 
very little more than 'scratch,' and he is sometimes heard now- 
a-days, still as if ashamed of that accomplishment, saying 'Scratch, 
scratch,' low to himself in a corner, but if he finds himself perceived 



3^2 The Saturday Club 

he will turn round quickly with a 'How d' ye do, ladies and gentle- 
men.' 

"Mr. Lowell Is deeply Interested In the derivations of words. . . . 
He complains much of his head, perhaps the trouble is he has 
filled it too full. Dr. Hedge quoted a few words of an old Latin 
poem. 'Who is that from.'" he asked. 'Why,' said Lowell, repeat- 
ing the remainder, 'that Is Walter Mapes.' Speaking of Burns, 
Lowell said he showed his greatness as a poet by the words he had 
created. Whipple amused them all by his naivete in calling out 
for 'stories' from Dana and afterward from Lowell. Professor 
Holmes was ill, but Longfellow was there and presided as usual 
in absence of Agassiz. He seemed nervous, as is not infrequently 
the case, and begged Jamie to sit by his side. His nervousness 
was probably not decreased by Lowell's stepping up to him and 
saying, 'Longfellow, you ought not to have printed those verses 
to Agassiz; they are all very well, but it was a private affair.' 
Dr. Hedge sat next J. and was most kindly. A nephew of John 
Bright was present. 

"The Club is strongly divided about Banks. Emerson and Mr. 
Forbes were present, but sat at the further end of the table, so 
I could have no report of their conversation. . . . 

"Mr. Dana repeated an experience of the Rev. Chandler Rob- 
bins, who was called to Cambridge to the marriage of an under- 
taker. The various sextons and brother undertakers of the com- 
munity were present, and he was privately Informed that the 
undertaker about to be married had fallen in love with the lady 
because he found her 'so handy at the business' (she had been 
called in as an assistant), 'being afraid of nothing. Why, there's 
a corpse upstairs now,' the narrator went on to say, 'but she don't 
mind It a bit.' It was a ghastly time enough for the poor parson." 

"Saturday, November 25, 1865. Jamie went to the Club. It 
was a brilliant meeting. Dr. Holmes was the life of it in the way of 
conversation, and amused them all excessively. Peals of laughter 
followed his brilliant sallies. He began to talk about homoe- 
opathy. 'Well,' said he, 'I feel, In beginning to talk upon this sub- 
ject, that I am talking to a set of Ignoramuses; that is, medicine is 
a subject none of you have studied and I have. I have devoted the 



yames Thomas Fields 3^3 

best part of my life in Europe and America to the study of my pro- 
fession. Now, if Mr. Longfellow should begin to talk about 
Dante, I should feel my Ignorance, — well, no, I am respectably 
informed about Dante, but then I should listen to him because he 
has given his time to the study of it.' And so on, fighting homoe- 
opathy to the death and amusing them all with his boyishness. 

"G. W. Curtis was one of Jamie's guests, and Mr. Rice, our 
representative, another. When Mr. Rice was introduced to Mr. 
Emerson, the latter said, *Mr. Rice, I am glad to meet you. Sir. 
I often see your name in the papers and elsewhere, and I am happy 
to take you by the hand for the first time.' 'Not for the first time,* 
Mr. Rice replied; 'thirty-three years ago I was passing the sum- 
mer in Newton. It was my school vacation, and I was enjoying 
the woods as boys will. One afternoon I was walking alone when 
you saw me and joined me and talked of the voices of Nature in a 
way which stirred my boyish pulses and left me thinking of your 
words far into the night.' Mr. Emerson seemed pleased at this, 
and said it must have been long ago indeed when he ventured to 
talk of such fine topics. 

"Mr. Emerson said later, talking of going to Europe, that 
'the €t'z7y American would ^/w^^ Europe for a year yet, hoping 
exchange would go down."* 

When conversations are not reported in full, sometimes a side- 
light, such as the following entry of February 25, 1867, about the 
Saturday Club meeting of the 23rd, brings its bit of illumination: 
"Dr. Holmes was in a great mood for talk, but Lowell was critical 
and interrupted him frequently. 'Now, James, let me talk and 
don't interrupt me,' he once said, a little ruffled by the continual 
strictures upon his conversation." Again, May 2, 1868, Norton 
is reported bitter "against the Saturday Club (this from sym- 
pathy with Lowell) because the members proposed at the last 
meeting were all blackballed. He thinks they must have a new 
Club, which would be a sad thing; it would be a square split, I 
am afraid, and now at times they do have grand social festivals. 
I hope the trouble will die out in talk, especially as Norton goes 
away ^ and Lowell, I hope and believe, would never organize the 
opposition himself." 

* This was just before a long absence in Europe. 



3^4 The Saturday Club 

On July 26, 1868, Mrs. Fields wrote of the meeting held the 
day before: "Professor Peirce and Rowse were there. 'What did 
Rowse have to say for himself.'" I asked J. 'Oh! he was very 
industrious with the viands and told me a story about a book 
turned out of the press in twenty-four hours, over which, it being 
one of my own stories I told him a year ago, I laughed tremen- 
dously.'" Another entry, November 6, 1870, describes a Sunday 
morning visit from "Appleton (Tom, as the world calls him)," 
and his talk on a variety of topics. "He spoke of the Saturday 
Club, and said that although he sometimes smiled at Holmes's 
enthusiasm over it, he believed in the main he was quite right, 
and it would be remembered in future as Johnson's Club has been, 
and recorded and talked of in the same way. Unfortunately I 
don't see their Boswell. I wish I could believe there was a single 
'chiel amang them takin' notes.' " 

The notes of Mrs. Fields herself make some amends for this 
deficiency, and though another passage, from a diary of 1871, 
deals rather with a continuation of a Club meeting than with the 
meeting itself, the talk in Charles Street seems to have gone on 
naturally enough from that at the Parker House to make the line 
between the two hardly worth drawing: — 

"Saturday night, February 25, was Jamie's Club again. After 
it was over a part of the company ^ adjourned to our tea-table, 
Longfellow, Bret Harte (his first appearance among the literati oi 
our shores). Holmes, Gay, Hunt, Ernest Longfellow, Frank San- 
born, and Jo. Bradlee. Bret Harte was the guest of the day and 
the Club was unusually large. Jamie thought him very satis- 
factory. His size is rather under than over the ordinary, his face 
deeply pitted with small-pox which has left a redness about the 
eyes as it is so apt to do. Otherwise he is fine-looking and reminded 
us a little of what the young Dickens must have been — less 
abounding, but of kindred nature. Fine hazel eyes, full lips, large 
moustache, an honest smile — so much for his personality. His 
accent slightly Western and his colloquial expression careless and 
inelegant often. His aplomb is good and not too great. He is 
modest and refined. Quite unconscious of himself as a prominent 

* Not all members of the Saturday Club. 



yames "Thomas Fields 3^5 

person during the evening, but talking and listening by turns al- 
together naturally. Speaking of the companionship we have heard 
so much of between the rattlesnake and the prairie dog, he said 
he had often seen the rattlesnake, owl, and squirrel coming from 
the same hole and living quite happily together. The warning 
of the snake before he struck prevented him from being as dan- 
gerous as many reptiles, because it gave time for escape. Dr. 
Holmes then cited a case he had known of the rapidity with which 
the poison of the rattlesnake spread. He had seen a part of the 
flesh of the dog, pinched up and held tightly while the snake was 
allowed to sting; the flesh was then immediately cut out, but in 
half an hour the dog would be dead. Swift as light, and in spite 
of the pinching of the arteries, which would prevent the free cir- 
culation of the blood certainly, the poison flew to the vital part 
of the frame. Dr. Holmes turned the talk then to homoeopathy 
and struggled with Longfellow as he so often does to endeavour 
to persuade him, but L. sits and smiles over the rational ravings 
of the doctor, but says little. Bret Harte is not a homoeopathist 
and brought forward as a point against it that it had no fraternity 
with science. Science advances, but homoeopathy is just where it 
was when Hahnemann promulgated his first extraordinary doc- 
trines. Harte talked somewhat from time to time of the Western 
life and landscape. Speaking with me of Miss Phillips, whom he 
likes as much as we do as a singer and woman (I should have put 
it the other way), I asked if she had made a pecuniary success 
there with the public. 'I don't know,' he said doubtfully; 'I think 
if the Angel Gabriel should go to California he would not make a 
success!' He told Mr. Fields a story of two men stopping at a 
Western inn. One used wonderfully powerful language in swearing 
and the other expressed to the innkeeper appreciation of this strong 
language. *Oh!' said the innkeeper, * that's nothing, that ain't! 
You should hear him exhort an indolent and impenitent muley* 

A final passage from the journal of Mrs. Fields recalls the 
Club's observance of the centenary of Sir Walter Scott: — 

"Sunday, August 27, 1871. Jamie dined with the Club yester- 
day and Walter Scott was remembered as if it were his birthday. 
Agassiz presided and there were three Scotch professors present; 



SAMUEL WORCESTER ROWSE 

This artist was born in Maine, perhaps about 1826, or a little 
later. He probably had only limited school advantages, but had 
native skill in drawing, and read good things. Owing to his mod- 
esty and reticence, little is known of his early life except that, as 
a youth, he lived in Augusta. His first work connected with art 
was employment in the engraving of bank bills. 

When he came to Boston, perhaps during the early fifties, his 
acquaintances presently found that he had an astonishing famili- 
arity with Shakspeare. Later, he confided to them that in his 
youth he had a burning desire to go on to the stage. At last he 
had the opportunity to appear as Richard HI, but this ended in 
tragic failure. Nevertheless Shakspeare remained with him as a 
part of his life. When a question arose if, or where, an expression 
occurred in Shakspeare, Mr. Rowse could suggest in what play to 
find it, and in the mouth of what character. Whether or not he had 
instruction in drawing in Boston does not appear, but he soon 
made a name there for his crayon portraits, accurate and delicate. 
Lowell became acquainted with him, liked him and his work. 
Through him Rowse became known to the Nortons and visited 
them at Newport, and, through many orders, his circle of friends 
in Boston and Cambridge society was enlarged. He was kindly, 
"cosy," as a lady who knew him well put it, yet sometimes uncom- 
fortably modest and aloof in company. Yet Lowell said, "Rowse 
may be silent, but he always says the best thing of the evening." 

In many households in and near Boston into which his art 
brought him, Rowse probably was often a guest while making 
his drawings, and thus, shy or reserved as he was, his serious 
and original speech made him interesting as a man to the men 
and also to the women whom he drew. Longfellow writes in his 
journal, March 3, 1858: "Rowse began yesterday to draw my 
head In crayons; his own idea, so I let him work away. He is a 
very clever artist, a Maine man." And a little later: "Rowse 



Bamuel Worcester Rozvse 

FROM A SKETCH BY HIMSELF IN A LETTER 




^-; "S^ C-^<^ 



t^yt'-w^/X/" y-^ 







Samuel TVorcester Rowse 3^9 

resumes portrait. But I find time notwithstanding to write a whole 
canto of Miles Standishy 

)■ In the next month, Rowse, commissioned by Mr. Norton to 
draw Emerson's head, is domiciled at his home in Concord and 
Emerson notes in his journal : " Rowse said that a portrait should be 
made by a few continuous strokes, giving the great lines; but if 
made by labour and by many corrections, though it became at 
last accurate, it would give an artist no pleasure — would look 
muddy. Anybody could make a likeness by main strength." 

When the sitting was over, Emerson would surely have invited 
his guest to walk with him to the woods, and probably to swim in 
Walden's clear water. This fragment of their talk remains: 
"Rowse said, 'God made him because he could not help it, and 
therefore he did not care for God, but for the necessity, or that 
which is.' I replied, 'You say God made you; no, it was that 
necessity which is the true God, and you must care for that, and 
do it homage, because you are of it, and it is immense and indis- 
pensable. You put the name of God on the wrong party.' " 

The portrait prospered, had a pleasing freedom in the handling, 
an open-air look. But one morning Rowse got up early and en- 
deavoured to make some little improvement. When the family 
came down to breakfast he told them that the meddling had 
been fatal, and he must begin again. The picture was probably 
destroyed by him, but fortunately a small photograph was taken 
at Mrs. Emerson's request, which is reproduced in Volume VI 
of the large-paper Centenary Edition of Emerson's Works. The 
new picture pleased Mr. Norton. He wrote in a letter after Rowse's 
death, to a lady, a mutual friend, "To those who did not know 
him personally his name is likely to recall the draughtsman of the 
best portrait of Emerson." Yet that was no great praise (Mr. 
Norton would not have counted Hawes's admirable daguerreo- 
type and the photographs taken from it), as two weak early minia- 
tures, a crayon, probably by Mrs. Hildreth, and David Scott's 
wooden painting, done in Edinburgh in 1847, were all the rivals. 
Yet Rowse's crayon, which always hung at Shady Hill, is a 
good likeness, but tightly drawn and with a weak mouth. But the 
charming portrait by Rowse of ArthurHugh Clough, and that of 



390 The Saturday Club 

Mr. Francis Cabot Lowell of Waltham, should be mentioned as 
his high-water mark. 

Rowse had a room in the Studio Building among the other ar- 
tists of the day. Writing thence in 1869 to Miss Jane Norton in 
Europe, he announces: "I have painted a portrait, and it is very 
good, really. I'm very much pleased with it." Hastily scrawled 
in pen and ink on the corner of this letter is a fair sketch of himself 
as I recall him while drawing my father's portrait. He liked to 
adorn his pleasant and sometimes humorous letters with mar- 
ginal play. Mr. Lowell liked Rowse's efforts in oil painting; said, 
"They have streaks of genius in them." 

Among Rowse's notable set of friends was Chauncey Wright 
whose genius was so highly prized by his Cambridge acquaintances. 
He and Rowse were in Europe at the time the Nortons were there, 
in 1872. Unlike most artists, Rowse was not greatly drawn by all 
the beauty of antiquity and association that Europe oifers. In 
1 88 1, he writes to Miss Grace Norton from Paris, where he had 
been disappointed in not finding Lowell: "I am very glad that I 
came abroad at this time. I have been refreshed and edified, and 
I am now glad to go home. America looks pleasant to me at this 
distance as it did when I was near. I have a good notion that I 
won't come again. But I won't promise. The wind bloweth where 
it listeth. The proper study of mankind is man, and I can study 
him and myself better in America than anywhere else. America is 
to me the centre and the head of the world — the last incarna- 
tion. The interest is all there for me. America was never meant 
by Providence as a place of refuge for the weak and the careless, 
or to breed an inferior race of men or horses!" 

After 1880, living mainly in New York, Rowse had made friends 
of a family, cordial and generous towards him thereafter to the 
end of his life. They earnestly desired that he should paint a large 
picture of their two beautiful daughters. Miss Norton tells me 
that this he laid out on a grand scale, to be a magnum opus, with 
landscape and accompaniments, like a Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
The family greatly valued him and encouraged the work. But 
it proved a tragedy. His health began to fail, there were inter- 
ruptions on both sides. In 1895 he wrote sadly of the attempt. 



Samuel IVorcester Rowse 3 9 ' 

One or both of the young girls whom he began to paint were ma- 
trons now. Yet the family had taken him into their friendship and 
urged him to go on, although seven years had passed. So, against 
his convictions, he had begun again and now five years had passed; 
"Still, I think it worth finishing, and it seems as if a few days 
will be all it will need and I expect to get those next summer." 
But apparently when he had recognized his failing eyesight and, 
after treatment, returned, he found to his dismay the colours all 
wrong. The picture seems not to have ever been finished. Inter- 
ruptions and ill-health came between, yet he declared in a letter 
from Rome, where he was with his patrons, his faith that "The 
nature of things is friendly to the wishes of humankind. Our 
means to arrive at these wishes are always subject to the nature of 
things with which they must accord. As Dr. Watts says, — 

'Eternity is all too short 
To utter forth Thy praise.' 

Some of my friends seem to think that I must be very lonesome. 
I can bear a good deal of loneliness. I can't think any one likes a 
little company more than I do. But I have always found myself 
— 'the Lord be thankit' — most abundantly cheerful." He 
longed to return from New York to Boston and his friends there, 
but his asthma forbade. He grew steadily feebler and died about 
the end of the old century or the coming in of the new. 

I quote a few expressions from the letter of his intimate friend 
concerning Mr. Rowse: "He was a rare man, and few knew the 
depth of his character — his integrity and the strength of his af- 
fectionate fidelity. ... I found much proof of the strong attach- 
ment of his friends, and also of his generosity." He then mentions 
the considerable estate that he left, adding: "The foundation of 
this was certainly the work of his hands. When was 'crayon 
headsman' ever so rich before!" 

Mr. Norton in his old age wrote, "We who knew Rowse shall 
remember him as one of the few whom we have known who had 
genuine originality of mind with depth and delicacy of sentiment." 

E. W. E. 



Chapter XII 

1865 

Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release! 
Thy God, in these distempered days. 
Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways. 

And though thine enemies hath wrought thy peace! 
Bow down in prayer and praise, 

Lowell 

IN the beginning of the year, Mr. Fessenden, President Lin- 
coln's Secretary of the Treasury, having been renominated 
for the Senate, was about to withdraw from the Cabinet, where 
his services had been found invaluable at a time of great finan- 
cial strain for the Country. Mr. Forbes, writing to him, said, — 
"Where shall we look for a man big enough to fill your place? . . . 
Governor Andrew is going out of office here after this year, and 
can go without great damage to our State affairs any time on 
sixty days' notice. He ought to be in the Cabinet, and while, for 
his own sake, his friends would like to see him in some other place 
less arduous and less dangerous, he is, in my judgment, the next 
best man after you for the place. I have summered and wintered 
him for five years of war and trouble, and while he represents the 
most advanced opinions on politics, I know no man who so fully 
unites tact and judgment with perseverance and force." 

The Governor, however, declined to be a candidate for this 
portfolio. He wrote to his friend: "For myself, I should dread 
to undertake any place but that of Attorney-General. My legal 
training and tastes would help me to master its duties, while the 
functions and opportunities for usefulness in that office are such 
as peculiarly tempt me to risk a failure for the chance of doing 
good, according to my way of thinking, which it aff"ords." This 
office, however, was not off"ered to him. 

At the seat of war in Virginia, General Sheridan, summoned by 
General Grant, yet allowed a very free hand, started with his 



1865 



393 



cavalry, in the last days of February, and, in spite of almost im- 
possible mud and swollen streams, rode across country from the 
Shenandoah Valley towards Richmond, defeating Early and de- 
stroying Southern supplies, and reported to Grant at City Point, 
.'resident Lincoln was there domiciled on board the little Mary 
Martin steamboat. All three of them knew that the dwindling 
Confederate troops were short of supplies, discouraged, and the 
fear was that they would slip away, try to join Johnston, and pro- 
long the war farther South another year. 

To quote the admirable little book of Colonel Newhall, of 
Sheridan's staff: "To help matters along and give matters a cheer- 
ful aspect it began to rain, first a Scotch mist . . . then a pour, as 
if the equinox, hurrying through the elements, had kicked over 
the water-buckets. About this time. General Grant was seized 
with the desire 'to end the matter before going back.' His illogical 
mind failed to be affected by the logic of events, failed to per- 
ceive that things were looking about as badly as they could for 
accomplishing anything, and so he sent a despatch to General 
Sheridan countermanding [certain milder conditional orders], 
and directing him to find the enemy's right and rear as soon as 
possible. General Sheridan rode over to Headquarters, water 
dripping from every angle of his face and clothes, . . . and between 
them they settled that, as soon as it was within the limits of horse 
possibility for cavalry to move, they would move a little and 
see what came of it, if only to pass the time. . . . The only thing 
probably that could have amused the company on that inauspi- 
cious morning would have been an excited horseman straining 
through the treacherous soil, waving his hat, and crying out that 
Lee would surrender to Grant one hundred miles from there in ten 
days from date." ^ 

And it happened. Lee was thus forced to come out of his strong 
entrenchments and hazard the last chance to save his army. The 
good news seemed incredible; it was so sudden. The relief and 
joy of the Country were beyond words. In their gratitude to their 
great General, the people, and surely our actively patriotic Club, 

* With Sheridan in Lee's Last Campaign, by a Staff Officer. Philadelphia, Lippincott 
&Co. l866. 



394 T^he Saturday Club 

accepted, and came to rejoice in, the humane and wise conditions 
which he made with brave and vanquished countrymen. 

On the day after Lee's surrender, April lo, Norton wrote to 
Lowell; "My heart is as full as it can be. I did not know until it 
was lifted this morning how heavy a load we had been bearing. 
I think of all those that suffered that we might rejoice. The dawn 
of our new day is bright." 

Lowell answers: "The news, my dear Charles, Is from Heaven. 
I felt a strange and tender exaltation. I wanted to laugh and I 
wanted to cry, and ended by holding my peace and being de- 
voutly thankful. There is something magnificent in having a 
Country to love. It is almost like what one feels for a woman. 
Not so tender, perhaps, but to the full as self-forgetful. I worry 
a little about reconstruction, but am inclined to think that mat- 
ters will very much settle themselves." This thought was to reap- 
pear, cast in beautiful form, in the last stanza of the "Ode" at the 
Commemoration in that happy summer. 

Following close upon the glad tidings of the triumph of the 
cause of Union and Freedom came the shock of the murder of 
America's guide through the weary years of war. Heavily as this 
blow fell upon all of our company, I find few written words from 
them about it, except Emerson's address to his townsfolk, and 
Lowell's fine tribute in the "Commemoration Ode," and also a 
passage quoted from a magazine article by him In Mr. Scudder's 
memoir. Speaking of the quick transmission of the tragic news he 
wrote: "It is no trifling matter that thirty millions of men should 
be thinking the same thought and feeling the same pang at a 
single moment of time, and that these vast parallels of latitude 
should become a neighbourhood more intimate than many a coun- 
try village. The dream of Human Brotherhood seems to becoming 
true at last. The peasant who dipped his net in the Danube . . . 
perhaps never heard of Caesar, or Caesar's murder; but the shot 
that shattered the forecasting brain, and curdled the warm, sweet 
heart of the most American of Americans, echoed along the wires 
through the length and breadth of a continent, swelling all eyes 
at once with tears of indignant sorrow. . . . What is Beethoven's 
'Funeral March for the Death of a Hero,' to the symphony of 



1865 



395 



love, pity, and wrathful resolve which the telegraph of that April 
morning played on the pulses of a nation?" 

Now, to go back a little to a happier theme. In 1863, word had 
come to Norton from Italy that Florence would celebrate in 1865 
the six-hundredth anniversary of her great poet's birth, and that 
she invited all lovers of him, wherever they might be, to unite with 
her in doing honour to his memory — which news Norton carried 
to Longfellow, asking him to postpone the bringing out of his 
translation of the Inferno that it might grace that occasion. So, 
in February, Longfellow sent the volume to Sumner in Washing- 
ton, asking him to hand it to the Italian Minister, requesting him 
to forward it to Italy. He also bade his friend to express to the 
Minister his regrets that the Purgatorio and Paradiso were not 
yet ready. He asked them both to look at the volume, saying, " It 
is beautiful and worthy of the Italian press; all written, printed, 
bound, in Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts." Long- 
fellow diligently pursued his task and, later in the year, notes in 
his journal: "Lowell, Norton, and myself had the first meeting 
of our Dante Club. We read the XXV Purgatorio and then had 
a little supper. We are to meet every Wednesday evening at my 
house." In the Life of Longfellow his brother gives, in a note, 
Mr. Norton's interesting account of these happy meetings of the 
scholar-friends. "Master as Longfellow was," he writes, "of his 
own language and that of Dante, and thorough as was his knowl- 
edge of the substance and significance of the poem, he was too 
modest to rely wholly upon his own judgment and genius in the 
performance of his work, and he called upon two of his friends 
to sit with him in the final revision of it." Longfellow would read 
from a proof-sheet a canto of his translation. "We paused over 
every doubtful passage, discussed the various readings, con- 
sidered the true meaning of obscure words and phrases, sought 
for the most exact equivalent of Dante's expression, objected, 
criticised, praised, with a freedom that was made perfect by Mr. 
Longfellow's absolute sweetness, simplicity, and modesty, and by 
the entire confidence that existed between us.^ Witte's text was 

* Longfellow carefully noted these criticisms, considered them apart, and made his own 
decision. 



39^ T'he Saturday Club 

always before us, and, of the early commentators, ButI was the 
one to whom we had most frequent and most serviceable recourse. 
They were delightful evenings; there could be no pleasanter occu- 
pation; the spirits of poetry, of learning, of friendship, were with 
us. Now and then some other friend or acquaintance would join 
us for the hours of study. Almost always one or two guests would 
come in at ten o'clock, when the work ended, and sit down with 
us to a supper, with which the evening closed." 

The genial and hospitable Fields was always eagerly questioned, 
on his return from the Club dinner, by his wife, who, happily for 
the editors of this volume, felt that some notes should be preserved 
of the gatherings of that notable company. These she wrote in her 
journal, and kindly had some of the entries, taken between 1865 
and 1 87 1, copied for our use. These will appear at their proper 
places. The first is as follows; though a little out of place, it 
seemed to come in better here than among the more important 
earlier events of the year: "February 24th. 1865. Club Meeting. 
Mr. James and Dr. Hedge there, and to Mr. James's discomfiture, 
Dr. Hedge attacked him about Swedenborg. Mr. James left early 
saying, that Dr. Hedge was always bringing up Swedenborg 
against him." Mr. Aldrich, Mr. Howells, Mr. Rowse, Mr. Akers, 
and Justin Winsor came afterward to tea with Mrs. Fields and ap- 
parently were at the Club together. 

At this time only Mr. Rowse of the latter group was a member, 
Howells and Aldrich not being chosen in for some years later. 
They came as guests. Benjamin Paul Akers, the sculptor, prob- 
ably came with Rowse. 

Agassiz had planned to explore Brazil and the Amazons, ac- 
companied by Mrs. Agassiz, and recruited a party of naturalists 
and students at his Museum, William James among them, and 
Mr. Ward's son, Thomas Wren Ward, as helpers. On the 23d of 
March, a dinner was given him at the Union Club, apparently by 
the Saturday Club, and there were a dozen guests present. 

Dr. Holmes was counted on, and not in vain, and read with 
affection and pleasure 



iS65 



A FAREWELL TO AGASSIZ 

How the mountains talked together, 

Looking down upon the weather. 

When they heard our friend had planned his 

Little trip among the Andes! 

How they'll bare their snowy scalps 

To the climber of the Alps 

When the cry goes through their passes, 
"Here comes the great Agassiz!" 
"Yes, I'm tall," says Chimborazo, 
"But I wait for him to say so, — 

That's the only thing that lacks, — he 

Must see me, Cotopaxi!" 
"Ay, ay!" the fire-peak thunders, 

And he must view my wonders! 

I 'm but a lonely crater 

Till I have him for spectator!" "■ 

The mountain hearts are yearning. 

The lava-torches burning, 

The rivers bend to meet him, 

The forests bow to greet him, 

It thrills the spinal column 

Of fossil fishes solemn. 

And glaciers crawl the faster. 

To the feet of their old master! 

Heaven keep him well and hearty, 

Both him and all his party! 

From the sun that broils and smites, 

From the centipede that bites. 

From the hailstorm and the thunder, 

From the vampire and the condor, 

From the gust upon the river. 

From the sudden earthquake shiver. 

From the trip of mule or donkey, 

From the midnight howling monkey. 

From the stroke of knife or dagger. 
From the puma and the jaguar, 
From the horrid boa-constrictor 
That has scared us in the pictur', 
From the Indians of the Pampas, 
Who would dine upon their grampas. 
From every beast and vermin 
That to think of sets us squirmin', 
From every snake that tries on 
The traveller his p'ison. 



397 



39^ The Saturday Club 

From every pest of Natur', 

Likewise the alligator, 

And from two things left behind him, - 

(Be sure they'll try to find him,) 

The tax-bill and assessor, — 

Heaven keep the great Professor! 

May he find, with his apostles. 

That the land is full of fossils, 

That the waters swarm with fishes 

Shaped according to his wishes, 

That every pool is fertile 

In fancy kinds of turtle. 

New birds around him singing, 

New insects, never stinging. 

With a million novel data 

About the articulata, 

And facts that strip off all husks 

From the history of mollusks. 

And when, with loud Te Deum, 
He returns to his Museum, 
May he find the monstrous reptile 
That so long the land has kept ill 
By Grant and Sherman throttled, 
And by Father Abraham bottled, 
(All specked and streaked and mottled 
With the scars of murderous battles, 
Where he clashed the iron rattles 
That gods and men he shook at,) 
For all the world to look at! 

God bless the great Professor! 

And Madam, too, God bless her! 

Bless him and all his band. 

On the sea and on the land, 

Bless them head and heart and hand. 

Till their glorious raid is o'er. 

And they touch our ransomed shore! 

Then the welcome of a nation, 

With its shout of exultation. 

Shall awake the dumb creation, 

And the shapes of buried sons 

Join the living creatures' paeans, 

Till the fossil echoes roar; 

While the mighty megalosaurus 

Leads the palaeozoic chorus, — 



i865 



399 



God bless the great Professor, 

And the land his proud possessor, — 

Bless them now and evermore! 

President Ellot, recalling this gathering of the Club to wish 
Agassiz an affectionate good-bye, — the genial man sitting, as 
usual, at one end of the table, Longfellow at the other, — said: 
"We all were grieved that he would not be with us again for a year. 
We wished him a successful journey and drank his health. Agassiz 
rose. He tried to speak, but could only manage to utter two or 
three words — then his voice broke, and he sat down, the tears 
running down his cheeks." 

In the Fiftieth Anniversary Number of the Atlantic Monthly 
Mr. John T. Trowbridge told the interesting story of the intro- 
duction by Dr. Holmes to the Saturday Club of a new poet, from 
the deck of the famous Hartford, Farragut's flagship. This was 
Henry Howard Brownell, a writer of fugitive pieces that went 
the rounds of the press; the "Old Cove, or Let us Alone," had 
pleased the Northern people during the winter of secession. 
Brownell's metrical version of the Admiral's general orders issued 
before the "River Fight" had come to Farragut's notice. He wrote 
to Brownell and invited him to come as his private secretary on 
the flagship, with the rank of Ensign. Thus he went through the 
great Bay Fight in August, 1864, and told its story with rugged 
truth, and also with fire and pathos.^ 

At this Club dinner, perhaps in May, six weeks after the end 
of the war, there was a large attendance. The guest was a modest, 
self-possessed man, hardly middle-aged. After dessert, "Holmes 
arose, and Lowell rapped on the board to call the attention of the 
talkers. After some complimentary allusion to his guest — who 
sat beside him with down-looking eyes, twirling his empty wine- 
glass — Holmes drew from his pocket a manuscript, remarking 
that he was to have the happiness of reading to us a poem by the 
writer who had shown himself an unrivalled master In that class 
of composition." The Doctor said: "The ink Is hardly yet dry on 
it. It is a vivid and dramatic picture of the sinking of that black, 

1 The "Let us Alone" ("Old Cove") and the "Bay Fight" are both to be found in 
Emerson's Parnassus. 



400 T^he Saturday Club 

piratical craft, the Rebellion. ... It is entitled 'Down'" — and 
the Doctor read it — "every eye turned upon him except the 
downcast pair at his elbow — throwing all his force of expression 
into the short and rugged lines." It was printed, as was also Mr. 
Trowbridge's "Jaguar Hunt" — both of them Jubilee poems — 
in the Atlantic of June, 1865. 

In May another poet was discovered. Lowell had found in a 
Western newspaper a war poem, strange and strong and touching, 
"The Old Sergeant." He was moved to find the writer. It was 
signed Forceythe Willson, with no other clue. He made inquiries, 
and wrote letters, but for some time with no result. Then by 
chance he found the poet he sought living in the next house to him 
some two hundred yards from Elmwood, across Mount Auburn 
Street. Lowell at once established neighbourly relations with 
this interesting newcomer. A very large man, still young, with 
heavy dark hair and beard strongly suggesting the bas-reliefs of 
Assyrian kings, and yet with a certain princely courtesy overcom- 
ing an evident natural delicacy and shyness.^ Lowell had found 
that Willson had a yet finer war-poem, "In State." ^ 

Mr. Emerson at once invited the new poet to Concord, and 
Mr. Willson's answering letter is of such a quality, it seems worth 
while to give some sentences here: — 

"I shall not fail to come. There have been flights of your birds 
in my sky for several years, and they have all been highly aus- 
picious. So I come to you with no misgivings on your account, 
but secretly and almost selfishly rejoicing that a great benefactor 
whom I have never yet so much as seen, and for whom, I trust, 
I shall have some glad tidings, lives right by my way and but a 
little farther on. Already, by your clean, good conduct of life, 
you have made me, I am sure, both wiser and better; and the 
consciousness of this fact illuminates me more and more clearly 
the nearer I approach you. 

' I here give my own memories of him, for, hearing from my father that he had a son 
a junior in College, Mr. Willson at once invited me to dine, an occasion I remember with 
great pleasure. He lived alone with a very much younger brother, being a widower him- 
self. No one would have dreamed that he was to die — I think of consumption, and 
in the next year. — E. W. E. 

* "The Old Sergeant" and "In State" were included by Mr. Emerson in his collection 
Parnassus. 



i865 



401 



"But It is not necessary to say much. The truly generous man- 
ner in which you make mention of certain poetical efforts and their 
author has conveyed to me no ordinary instruction. It may turn 
out that you have done a more Important part In the young man's 
training than you can yet be aware. But all these things will say 
themselves to you a great deal more satisfactorily than they can 
be written." 

r July brought the day, proudly and sadly joyful, of Harvard's 
Commemoration of her honoured dead, and the gathering back of 
her living soldiers; these last, of all ranks from privates to Gen- 
erals, greeted one another in joyous equality, their proud rela- 
tives and their future wives around them. 

The day was perfect. A great awning spread over the quad- 
rangle behind Harvard Hall gave the needed shade. General 
Devens presided. Governor Andrew paid the tribute and gave 
the welcome for Massachusetts, President Hill for the University, 
Major-General Meade spoke for the Army, and Admiral Davis for 
the Navy, and Mr. Emerson for Scholars. 

Of the Reverend Phillips Brooks's opening prayer (then) Pro- 
fessor Charles W. Eliot said: "That was the most impressive 
utterance of a proud and happy day. Even Lowell's 'Commem- 
oration Ode' did not at the moment so touch the hearts of 
his hearers. That one spontaneous and intimate expression of 
Brooks's noble spirit convinced all Harvard men that a young 
prophet has risen up In Israel." 

Lowell's "Ode" was wonderful, far up on heights that he but 
rarely reached. He had tried to get Into the mood, had written 
portions with hope followed by misgiving; only on the day before 
the occasion, as he told a friend, "the whole thing came out of 
me with a rush." He made a fair copy — five hundred and twenty- 
three lines — through the night, and went haggard to bed at dawn. 
"Virtue enough had gone out of me to make me weak for a fort- 
night after." This loss, and the delivery of the poem virtually in 
the open air, made it less telling on the moment, but its noble 
lines have been for more than fifty years enshrined In the memo- 
ries of Harvard men, a help and joyful inspiration. In this very 



402 'The Saturday Club 

war to-day, to save right and civilization itself, that poem is a 
live force. ^ 

Poems were read also by Dr. Holmes, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, 
and Charles T. Brooks. 

Mr. Cabot, in his Memoir of Emerson, quotes Lowell's words as 
to the fitness of Emerson's having been asked to speak on that 
occasion, thus: "To him more than all other causes together did 
the young martyrs of our Civil War owe the sustaining strength 
of thoughtful heroism that is so touching in every record of their 
lives." 

Of these youths, Emerson said in his short address: "These 
dedicated men! who knew on what duty they went, and whose 
fathers and mothers said, *We gave him up when he enlisted.' ^ 
We see the dawn of a new era, worth to the world the lives of all 
this generation of American men, if they had been demanded." 

Mr. Paine, the Musical Director of the University, conducted 
the music, assisted by the chorus of the Harvard Musical Associa- 
tion. 

D wight wrote a "Horatian Ode'^ which was sung to Flem- 
ming's part song, "Integer Vitse, Scelerisque purus": — 

"Manly and gentle, pure and simple-hearted 
Sweet were their days of peaceful use and beauty. 
Sweeter than peace, or days or years is freedom, 

Thought our young heroes. j . 

War's wild alarm drove sleep from every pillow; 
Slavery, rampant, stalked athwart the broad land. 
Prompt at the call of Country and of Duty, 

Flew the young heroes. 
Darkly the clouds hung o'er the doubtful conflict; 
Out shone the rainbow, — Liberty to all Men! 

* At Commencement in 1917 Major Henry Lee Higginson, who for fifty years has held 
before the generous youth of Harvard the ideals of the young scholars of his day who 
freely gave their lives in the war for Freedom, ended his short and strong appeal for 
help in this even greater struggle, with the last five lines of the "Ode," so moved by 
the associations that he told me he could not have uttered another. — E. W. E. 

" What were our lives without thee ? 
What all our lives to save thee ? 
We reck not what we gave thee; 
We will not dare to doubt thee, 
But ask whatever else and we will dare ! " 

' These words were those of the mother of Colonel Robert G. Shaw when she heard of 
his gallant death on the parapet of Fort Wagner. 






iS65 



403 



Lo! now a Country grand enough to die for! 

Peace to our heroes! 
Rear we for them no cold sepulchral marble, 
Fresh in our hearts their very selves are living, 
Dearer and nearer now, — e'en as God is nearest, 

Risen in glory! 
Cease from thy weeping; rise, O Alma Mater! 
Count thy young heroes tenderly and proudly; 
Beaming thine eyes, with holy joy confess them; 

These are thy children!" 

This affectionate occasion — a day of pride and sympathy, 
mourning and rejoicing — cannot be forgotten by any one who was 
there, while memory remains. 

Judge Hoar, in a letter to Lowell, declares his feeling of grati- 
tude for the conditions and surroundings of his lot on Earth, and, 
praising the noble "Ode," he exclaims: "What an occasion that 
Commemoration was! My! it was the whole war concentrated, 
and you have embalmed its essence and flavour forever. I don't 
believe there ever was such a time to live In as our lifetime, since 
the world was made; and I consider falling in with you as one 
of the chief felicities of existence, which — if I should n't go 
to Heaven (as is much to be doubted) — will give great help in 
striking a comfortable balance of the total result of my creation." 

In connection with the return of Harvard's sons from the war, 
an anecdote about Professor Peirce is worth preserving, relating 
also to a peculiarly interesting young soldier. The examinations 
for admission of a new class — to be the class of '69 — occurred 
within a few days of the Commemoration. That day showed many 
youths maimed in battle, but, a few days later, a young ex- 
Confederate Captain, with ojie sleeve empty, presented himself 
for examination and was admitted to the Freshman class. He 
bore one of the fine old clan names of Nova Scotia, but had early 
found employment in Charleston, and joined the Militia. He 
served through the war until he was wounded and captured, 
having distinguished himself for gallantry during the Confeder- 
ate defence of Fort Sumter. In college, his quiet demeanour, seri- 
ous, yet friendly, won increasing respect. His maturer mind, keen 
appetite for knowledge, and remarkable application gave him, at 



404 The Saturday Club 

graduation, the first place In his class, and won him a liberal award 
from the University to continue his studies the next year. The 
"Captain," we will call him, formed a friendship with a class- 
mate, a high scholar also, but not, like him, as the result of zeal 
and hard work, for this friend had the advantage of literary back- 
ground and was a thinker. One day the Captain said that he be- 
lieved that it was possible for a bright and determined man to ac- 
quire all human knowledge within a liberal span of lifetime. He 
said, in effect, that if a man trains himself to read, and to remem- 
ber, it is simply necessary for him to seek out the really impor- 
tant books in which human knowledge is recorded in its various 
branches. His friend assured him that this was nonsense; but the 
Captain clung to his hopeful theory. Finally, the disputants agreed 
to leave the decision of their case to Professor Peirce. They called 
on him, were kindly received, and each stated his case in turn. 
Then the Master gave judgment as follows, solving the ques- 
tion clearly by geometry: "No. No man can acquire all human 
knowledge. Knowledge is a circle with infinitely long radii. I be- 
gan, as we all do, at the centre, and have laboured all my life, 
and I have succeeded in progressing an infinitely short distance 
on one of the infinitely long radii." 

During this summer a project for establishing a sound weekly 
journal, loyal, but critical rather than partlzan. In which Norton, 
Lowell, Forbes, Olmsted, and Ward had interested themselves, 
came to fulfilment, and the Nation, with Edwin Lawrence Godkin 
as editor, was launched on its notable career. 

Early In October Dr. Holmes, writing an affectionate letter to 
Mr. Motley, then our Minister to England, says: — 

"I cannot help thinking that the new attractions which our 
Country will have for you will restore you and your family to those 
who grudge your possession to an alien capital; and that, having 
stood manfully at one of our European outposts through the four 
years' campaign, you may wish to be relieved now that the great 
danger seems over. . . . What a fine thing it would be to see you 
back at the Saturday Club again! Longfellow has begun to come 
again. He was at his old place, the end of the table, at our last 
meeting. 



I 



i865 



405 



"We have had a good many of the notabilities here within the 
last three or four months. ... Sir Frederick Bruce, the new Minis- 
ter, pleased us all. . . . White-haired, white-whiskered, red-cheeked, 
round-cheeked, with rich dark eyes, hearty, convivial, not afraid 
to use the strengthening monosyllable, for which Englishmen are 
famous, pretty freely, outspoken for our side as if he were one of 
us, he produced, on me at least, a very different effect from that 
of lively Lord Napier, or plain and quiet Lord Lyons. 

*'I had a good deal of talk with Grant, whom I met twice. He 
is one of the simplest, stillest men I ever saw. He seems torpid 
at first and requires a little management to get much talk out of 
him. Of all the considerable personages I have seen, he appears 
to me to be the least capable of an emotion of vanity. . . . He 
was not conscious, he said, of ever having acted from any per- 
sonal motive during his public service. We (of the West), he said, 
were terribly in earnest. The great crisis was the battle of Shiloh; 
that he would not lose; he would have fought as long as any men 
were left to fight with. If that had been lost, the war would have 
dragged on for years longer. . . . Did he enjoy the being followed 
as he was by the multitude,^ 'It was very painful.' I doubt if we 
have had any idea so completely realized as that of the republi- 
can soldier in him. . . . 

" I don't think you have met Stanton. I found him a very mild, 
pleasant person to talk with, though he is an ogre to rebels and 
their Northern friends. . . . 

"Old Farragut, whom I foregathered with several times, is the 
lustiest gaillard of sixty-something one will meet with in the 
course of a season, ... It was odd to contrast him and Major 
Anderson. The Major — General, I should say — is a conscien- 
tious, somewhat languid, rather bloodless-looking gentleman, who 
did his duty well, but was overtasked in doing it, . . . but the 
old Admirable — bona fide accident — let it stand, is full of hot 
red blood, jolly, juicy, abundant, equal to anything, and an extra 
dividend of life left ready for payment after the largest expendi- 
ture. I don't know but he is as much the ideal seaman as Grant 
the ideal general; but the type is not so rare." 

Guests seem to have been plenty that autumn. The Doctor 



4o6 The Saturday Club 

goes on: "Mr. Burlingame has come home from China on a visit. 
It is strange what stories they all bring back from the Celestials. 
Richard Dana, Burlingame, Sir Frederick Bruce, all seem filled 
with a great admiration of the pigtails. 'There are twenty thou- 
sand Ralph Waldo Emersons in China,' said Mr. Burlingame to 
me. ' We have everything to learn from them in the matter of 
courtesy. They are an honester people than Europeans.'" 

The Doctor goes on to speak well of another future associate in 
the Club: "Mr. Howells from Venice was here not long ago. . . . 
This is a young man of no small talent. In fact his letters from 
Venice are as good travellers' letters as I remember since Eothen.^^ 

It should be mentioned that in October Dr. Hedge brought out 
his Reason in Religion, a notable work from this philosophic yet 
conservative clergyman. 

Of the November Club we have, through Mrs. Fields, her hus- 
band's report. Henry Ward Beecher and Governor Parsons of 
Alabama were present, and the Governor had sad stories to tell 
us of the suffering and destitution of the South and especially in 
his own State. "Governor Parsons ^ has come North for the pur- 
pose of urging Massachusetts to forgiveness and the sending of 
help for the suffering of Alabama. Governor Andrew introduced 
the subject and Charles Sumner spoke against it." 

The Club chose no new members in this year. 

1 Lewis E. Parsons, appointed provisional Governor of Alabama in June, 1865. 



Chapter XIII 
1866 

Who, if he rise to station of command. 
Rises by open means ; and there will stand 
On honourable terms, or else retire. 
And in himself possess his own desire. 

Wordsworth 

THESE lines are suggested by Motley's recall from his high 
mission, later in the year. Appropriately to the leading in 
of Winter's main battle-line by January, the appearance of Whit- 
tier's Snow-Bound may be mentioned; also Emerson's final versi- 
fying of the story that he recorded in his journal a winter or two 
before, of his heartening-up by the chickadee when nearly para- 
lyzed in the cold snowdrifts in a winter walk — on which poem 
Matthew Arnold printed the following criticism: "One never 
quite arrives at learning what the titmouse did for him at all, 
though one feels a strong interest and desire to learn it; but one 
is reduced to guessing, and cannot be sure that, after all, one has 
guessed right." 

A seasonable bad sore throat in the middle of the month kept 
Lowell away from the Dante Club. Longfellow sent him a bottle 
of claret as a consoling astringent gargle, accompanied by an 
Italian letter (the first three lines being a quotation), as follows: ^ 

ALL' ILLUSTRISSIMO SIGNOR PROFESSORE LOWELL 

Prescriptione per il Mai di Gole Prescription for a Sore Throat 

"Benedetto "Benedight 
Quel claretto That claret light 

Che si spilla in Avlgnone." Which is tapped in Avignone." 

Dici Redi; Redi said it; 

Se non, vede Who don't credit, 

La famose sua Canzone. Let him read the famed Canzone. 

^ Later, Longfellow rendered his Italian verse into English, as given here in parallel 
column. 



4o8 



The Saturday Club 



Questo vino 

L' Aretino 

Loda certo con ragione; 

Ma sta fresco 

Ser Francesco 
Se '1 miglione lo suppone. 

Con qualunque 

Vino dunque 

Tinto che dall' uvo cola, 

Descolato 

Ed acquato, 
Gargarizza ben la gole. 

T' assicuro 

E ti giuro 

(Uomo som di mia parole) 

II dolore, 

Professore, 
Tutto subito s' invola. 



This same wine 

The Aretine 

Justly praises as he drinks it; 

And yet but poor 

His taste, I 'm sure, 
If the best of wines he thinks it. 

Take this or another 
(Make no bother) — 
Any red wine in your bottle 
Mixed with water 
Of any sort or 
Kind; then gargle well your throttle. 

I assure you 

It will cure you 

(Me a man of my word you own). 

Your distress, or 

Pain, Professor, 
All of a sudden will have flown. 



Lowell soon reported the effect : — 

Risposta del Signor Professore Answer of the Professor 

Ho provato Quite delighted, 

Quest' acquato Quick I tried it, 

Vino tinto delle Francia, Your red wine of Avignon! 
E s' envole When like a bullet 

Dalla gole Out of my gullet 

II dolore alia pancia! Into my paunch the pain has flown! 

Our good Governor Andrew's five years' noble and effective 
service to the Country was over. He had so lavishly spent him- 
self in widely varying and difficult thinking and working that his 
need of utter rest and recreation was commanding. His law prac- 
tice had gone elsewhere; he had been obliged to draw upon his 
savings; his need to provide for his family was urgent. What to 
do next was the problem. After his larger work the thought of 
settling down in his Boston office in the legal harness and rebuild- 
ing his practice was somehow not attractive. He had a pleasant 
thought of going to Washington, the centre of a regenerated 
Country, and winning a practice there; his age in years was only 
forty-seven, and naturally he did not know how small was the 



i866 409 

remnant of his vitality. Strangely enough, the offer of the Presi- 
dency of Antioch College in Ohio had an attraction for him. But 
his many honouring and devoted friends urged that Boston must 
not lose him. President Lincoln had offered him, in 1865, the Col- 
lectorship of the Port of Boston. Andrew, his secretary reports, 
said to a friend, that it "was the most lucrative office in New 
England, and, as it had been the habit to entrust it to men who had 
held other high official stations and rendered large public service for 
inadequate pay, he supposed it was tendered to him in accord- 
ance with that practice." But Andrew said : " I can accept no such 
place for such a reason. As Governor of Massachusetts, I feel 
that I have held a sacrificial office, that I have stood between the 
home of the altar and sprinkled it with the best blood of this 
Commonwealth — a duty so holy that it would be sacrilege to 
profane it by any consideration of pecuniary loss or gain." 

So the good Governor settled down to work in Boston. He was 
thankful for a commission In Washington that gave him much air 
and exercise in getting about, and spoke of "this benefit to my 
weak and half worn-out head, relieving me of much of the pain 
which I had suffered in my head and back for these last three 
months," 

He rallied much, delighted in having time for doing things with 
his children — to all children he was devoted — and he had 
the relaxation and refreshment of the Saturday Club and several 
others. Within the year he found that all the practice he could 
desire came to him and this reassured him as to household anxie- 
ties. He had some brilliant successes before the jury or at Impor- 
tant legislative hearings, always looking at things from a higher 
plane, humane, and brave In his opinions. 

The troubles resulting from the custom of having a compromise 
Vice-President were now beginning to show the people that Lee's 
surrender, and Emancipation, did not end the war. The brands of 
the conflagration were to smoulder for some years yet. 

Emerson, writing of the power of manners as a principal agent 
in human affairs, and recalling how admirable. In his youth, ap- 
peared the Southern boys In college, says: "Andrew Johnson, 
wont to look up to the planters as a superior race, cannot resist 



4IO The Saturday Club 



their condescensions and flatteries, and, though he could not be 
frightened by them, falls an easy prey to their caresses. This result 
was foretold by Moncure D. Conway and Frederick Douglass." 

In 1865, a month before the ending of the war, which end he 
believed at hand, Dana had written: "I see a generation of la- 
bour and vast problems to solve, but that should depress no man. 
To my mind the one point to be gained by this war is the settlement 
forever, at home and abroad, of the fact as well as the theory that 
our republic is a government — in the philosophical sense, a state 

— created by the people of the Republic, acting directly on indi- 
viduals, to which each citizen owes a direct allegiance from which 
no power on earth can absolve him, and from which neither State 
nor individual has any recourse, except to the moral right of 
revolution. If this is left an open question, the war is in vain. 
If it is settled, the war is worth its cost. In some respects the 
abolition of slavery assumes larger proportions than the subject 
I have named. But, to my mind, the preservation of our com- 
bined National and State system — our solar-planetary system 

— is the sine qua non of everything else. If that fails, the negro 
question, so far as it concerns mj-, would be of little consequence. If 
that succeeds, I think it will carry the negro question with it." 

Lowell, in his last political article before the Reconstruction dif- 
ficulties began, had written: "The more thought we bestow on the 
matter we are more thoroughly persuaded that the only way to 
get rid of the negro is to do him justice. Democracy is safe because 
it is just, and safe only when it is just to all. Here is no question of 
black or white, but simply of man. We have hitherto been strong 
in proportion as we dared be true to the sublime thought of our 
own Declaration of Independence, which for the first time pro- 
posed to embody Christianity in human laws, and announced the 
discovery that the security of the state is based on the moral in- 
stinct and the manhood of its members." 

Dana, an earnest and working patriot, yet had perhaps a 
shorter vision than Lowell had in the new and difficult problems. 
He held the position of District Attorney all through the war 
period and until the work of reconstructing the conquered South 
had been fully entered upon. 



i866 411 

After the war, Mr. Dana occupied ground on the burning ques- 
tion of Reconstruction in the Southern States between those of 
his friends, Adams and Sumner, yet strangely enough becoming 
nearer to the extreme views of the latter than the more considered 
ones of the former. In a speech in Faneuil Hall, in June, 1865, 
he said: "We stand upon the ground of war, and we exercise 
the powers of war. ... I put that proposition fearlessly. The con- 
quering parly may hold the other in the grasp of war, until it has 
secured whatever it has a right to require. ^^ 

Not sympathizing with President Johnson's policies, Dana had 
resigned his office. He desired to go to Congress, but there being 
no place open in either house, he was chosen a member of the 
Massachusetts House of Representatives and remained there two 
years, active and influential. In his second year, as head of the 
Judiciary Committee, he became leader of the House, in which 
place his biographer says he was less successful, from his inborn 
peculiarities, acquiring the name, among the more democratic 
members, of "The Duke of Cambridge." 

An urgent appeal of the brave Cretans for help from America 
came from William J. Stillman, Consul in the island and their val- 
iant champion. Dr. Howe, Governor Andrew, and Mr. Forbes took 
an active and practical interest in the struggle of that brave people 
against the cruel Turkish tyranny. The latter, apparently serving 
on a relief committee, writes to Stillman: "Now a movement is 
going on here to get food. I am a good deal of a Sharps-rifle Chris- 
tian and believe in the sword of the flesh, and am inclined to turn 
the committee, at least part-way, on to powder instead of flour." 

He then tells of the extraordinary cheapness of the various mili- 
tary rifles at this time, and asks Stillman whether it is too late 
to send them. 

In May, Lowell writes to Norton: — 

My dear Charles : — 

I snatch a moment from the whirl of dissipation to bring up 
for you the annals of Cambridge to the present date. In the first 
place, Cranch ^ and his daughters are staying with us — since last 

* Christopher Cranch, artist, poet, aad author of children's stories. 



4^2 'The Saturday Club 

Saturday. On that day I took him to the Club, where he saw many 
old friends (he has not been here for twenty years, poor fellow) 
and had a good time. We had a pleasant time, I guess. With me 
it was a business meeting. I sat between Hoar and Brimmer, that 
I might talk over college matters. Things will be arranged to suit 
me, I rather think, and the salary (perhaps) left even larger than 
I hoped. 

Cranch and I amuse me very much. They read their poems 
to each other like a couple of boys, and so contrive for themselves 
a very good-natured, if limited, public. I cannot help laughing to 
myself, whenever I am alone, at these rhythmical debauches. The 
best of it is that there is always one at least who is never bored. 

Just before moving to his breezy summer home at Nahant in 
the midsummer, Longfellow writes in his journal: "June 13 th. The 
last Dante reading [for the summer], Lowell, Greene,^ Holmes, 
Howells, Furness,^ and Forceythe Willson. Paradiso, XXXHL 
A very pleasant supper which did not break up until two o'clock 
in the morning. After it Greene and I sat talking in the study 
until three. The day was dawning and the birds were singing 
when we went to bed." 

In July, to the joy of his friends, Agasslz returned from his 
explorations in Brazil. He had been most cordially received by 
the Emperor, Dom Pedro, who, on his uncertain throne, envied 
the free naturalist, enjoyed his company, and took great interest 
in his work, furthering his plans and journeylngs in every way 
that was possible. Agasslz explored the Amazons up to their 
sources In the mountains of Peru, and, through his assistants, 
collected rare species of fish from the other inland waters. 

Here is the account given by Mr, Fields of the rejoicing of his 
friends at the next Club meeting which Mrs. Fields wrote down: — 

"August 25, 1866. Dinner was not a large assemblage, but 
was the first since the return of Agasslz. Agasslz seized Holmes in 
his arms and took him quite off his feet. Longfellow was there, 
and told Mr. Fields that Charles Sumner was really engaged to 

^ George W. Greene, an intimate friend and constant correspondent of Longfellow. 
* Dr. Horace Furness, of Philadelphia, the Shaksperian Commentator. 



i866 413 

be married. Agasslz talked much of the greatness of Brazil, of 
the trees, of which he had counted one hundred and forty-eight 
varieties in the forests, whereas we have about twenty varieties 
in the forests of New England — of a vast space there ready for 
enterprise. 

"Agassiz, Longfellow, and Fields went together as far as Lynn; 
as they looked from the car windows into the beautiful moonlight, 
one asked Agassiz if that were not as beautiful as Brazil. 'Oh,' 
said he, 'I was just then reflecting how sterile is New England 
after the luxuriant beauty of Brazil.'" 

■ To this we can fortunately add the following remarkable account 
of this same joyous reception by the Saturday Club of their loved 
and honoured explorer, written by the Reverend Robert CoUyer : — 

"A memory comes of a day when I was Emerson's guest at the 
Saturday Club dinner. Agassiz had just returned from Brazil; 
this was his first appearance. Lowell was there and Dr. Holmes, 
my dear friend, Mr. James T. Fields the publisher, and many old 
friends beside, who when he [Agassiz] came into the room joined 
hands, made a ring, and danced around him like a lot of boys, 
while Mr. Emerson stood apart, his face radiant. He sat at the 
head of the table. Dr. Holmes sat next him, and their talk near 
the end of the banquet was of hymns, and the best. Dr. Holmes 
mentioned one I still hold in great favour, and began to tear it to 
pieces — 'It's not a hymn, but a piece of very nice cabinet work 
— the writer made the pieces one by one, glued them together, 
and there you are'; but then his voice softened and took a deeper 
tone as he said, 'There is one hymn I count among the finest ever 
written,' and Mr. Emerson lifted his face to attention while the 
good poet chanted the first sentence : — 

'Thou hidden love of God, whose height, 
Whose depth unfathomed no man knows; 

I see from far thy beauteous light, 
Inly I sigh for thy repose. 

My heart is pained, nor can it be 

At rest till it find rest in Thee.' 

"*Yes, yes,' Mr. Emerson said fervently, 'I know the hymn — 
it is one of the finest in our tongue.' " 



4^4 The Saturday Club 

A few weeks later, Mr. Emerson records in his journal that he 
visited Agassiz, by invitation, with his wife and elder daughter, 
and spent the day at his house and on the Nahant rocks. Agassiz 
told him: — 

"In Brazil he saw on a half-mile square one hundred and sev- 
enteen different kinds of excellent timber — and not a saw-mill 
in Brazil. A country thirsting for Yankees to open and use its 
wealth. In Brazil is no bread; manioca in pellets the substitute, 
at the side of your plate. No society, no culture; could only name 
three men — the Emperor, M. Coutinho, and M. Couteo. . . . 
For the rest, immense vulgarity; and, as Longfellow said, the 
Emperor wished he could swap places with Agassiz, and be a 
professor — which Agassiz explained thus, that the Emperor said, 
'Now you, when you leave your work, can always return into 
cultivated society; I have none.' 

"Agassiz says, the whole population is wretchedly immoral, 
the colour and features of the people showing the entire inter- 
mixing of all the races. Mrs. Agassiz found the women ignorant, 
depressed, with no employment but needle-work, with no future, 
negligent of their persons, shabby and sluttish at home, with 
their hair about their ears, only gay in the ballroom; the men well 
dressed." 

On one occasion Emerson gave a dinner to Hon. Lyulph Stan- 
ley, who came with letters to him, in Concord, and assembled 
as guests Wendell Phillips, Agassiz, and his neighbours EUery 
Channing, the whimsical poet, and Alcott, the calm philosopher 
— surely a varied company. A meeting of the State Agricultural 
Society was held in Concord on that day, and Agassiz had un- 
doubtedly been bidden to that in advance. It was in the forenoon, 
and Emerson went with Agassiz, recording the day in the evening 
in his journal, thus: — 

"Agassiz is really a man of great ability, breadth, and resources, 
a rare and rich nature, and always maintains himself — in all com- 
panies, and on all occasions. I carried him to Mrs. Horace 
Mann's,^ and afterwards, to Buirs,^ and in each house he gave 

^ Horace Mann, Jr., her son, a naturalist, who died in his youth, was then about to 
study under Agassiz in the Museum. 

* Ephraim Wales Bull, the producer of the Concord grape. 



i866 415 

the fittest counsel in the best way. At the Town Hall, he made an 
excellent speech to the farmers, extemporaneous, of course, but 
with method and mastery, on the question of the location of the 
Agricultural College, urging the claims of Cambridge. 

"Agassiz thinks that, if he could get a calf elephant, and young 
enough, — that is, before birth, — he should find the form of the 
mastodon; that if he could get a tapir calf before birth, he should 
find the form of the megatherion. But, at present, these are prac- 
tical impossibilities, as they require hundreds of dissections; hun- 
dreds, that is, of live subjects." 

Mrs. Fields reports from her husband on September 29th, 1866: 
"Brilliant evening at the Club. Mr. Dana had just returned. Mr. 
Sumner was present and a full table. The guests, beside the usual 
company, were: Mr. Lefaveur of England; Dr. Storer of New 
York; Mr. Putnam, publisher, ditto; Mr. Samuel Hooper, and 
young Wendell Holmes. Afterward Longfellow, Holmes, Dwight, 
Le Favre, J. T. F., etc., went in company to hear Parepa. O. W. H. 
said, 'Oh, yes, let us go. I hate to have an odd end of an evening 
left over,' — 'As if it were an old cigar,' Mr. Fields added. 

"Agassiz said, after being questioned whether the dodo was 
good to eat: 'Yes, indeed,' he replied. 'What a peety we could 
not have the dodo at our Club. A good dinner is humanity's great- 
est blessing. What a peety the Dutchman carried a ship with rats 
to Mauritius which sucked the eggs of the dodo, as large as a loaf, 
and everybody found the bird himself so good they did eat him, 
so they have become extinct. We know of but one other bird of re- 
cent date, who has become extinct, the Northern Hawk. The Bishop 
of Newfoundland did send me his bones — a great treasure.' " 

A story must here be introduced — I forget its source — of an 
occasion when an enterprising reporter contrived to get to the din- 
ing-room door, probably while the Club was gathering, and asked 
to speak with Dr. Holmes. On his appearance the reporter began 
his efforts to pump him as to the customs and methods of pro- 
cedure. The Doctor promptly interrupted him, saying, "We do 
nothing but tell our old stories," and rejoined the company. 

Another incident must also find a place in this year's story, so 
characteristic is it of our manly and patriotic merchant, Forbes. 



4^6 'The Saturday Club 

About this time, a Mr. Springer, of Illinois, having observed that 
Mr. Forbes paid a very large tax, wrote asking him to join him in 
contesting the validity of the Acts of Congress under which the 
income tax was imposed. The answer was as follows: — 

Sir, — I have not been fighting the Rebels for five years to be- 
gin now and cooperate with you in attacking the credit of our 
Country. I decline your offer. Your ob't servant, 

J. M. Forbes. 

Mr. Howells, living In Cambridge, published this year his 
Venetian Life. Motley was working at his History of the United 
Netherlands in Vienna. Mr. Fields in this year, as for some years 
before and after, was conducting the Atlantic genially and success- 
fully, always in pleasant relation with the contributors, who often 
met one another for the first time at his hospitable table, where 
Mrs. Fields presided so gracefully. Whipple and Fields in this 
year edited the Family Library of British Poets from Chaucer to 
the Present Time. Whipple, like Emerson, gave a course of lec- 
tures every winter, later to be pruned and polished into essays. 

An early and strong friendship was that between Lowell and 
Judge Hoar. Lowell dedicated his new volume, the second series 
of Biglozv Papers^ to his friend: "A very fit thing it seems to me," 
he said, "for of all my friends he is the most genuine Yankee." 
This compliment the Judge thus acknowledged: — 

Concord, November 3, 1866. 
My dear James, — I desire reverently to express my profound 
sense of obligation. I am handed down to posterity. Immortality 
is secure. An attache to some splendid embassy — a poor plodding 
pedestrian suddenly and unexpectedly receiving a "lift" that 
takes him to his journey's end — a donation visit to a country 
minister — comparisons fail me! 

During this year a grievous wrong was done to one of our mem- 
bers, and, through this action, to the Country which he was serv- 
ing with loyalty and distinction — the recall of Motley. Dr. 
Holmes, In his memoir of his friend, tells the disgraceful story in 
full. The main facts are these: — 



i866 4-^7 

The President, Andrew Johnson, received a letter from an un- 
known person, dated in October, in Paris, signed "George W. 
McCrackin, of New York." It was full of accusations of various 
Ministers, Consuls, and others representing the United States. 
"Its language was coarse, its assertions improbable, its spirit 
that of the lowest of party scribblers. It was bitter against New 
England, especially so against Massachusetts, and it singled out 
Motley for particular abuse." A paragraph appeared three years 
later in the Daily Advertiser quoting a Western paper to the effect 
that a William R. McCracken had died, and had confessed to hav- 
ing written that letter. Motley, he said, had 'snubbed him and 
refused to lend him money. The writer of this paragraph added, 
"He appears to have been a Bohemian of the lowest sort." This 
letter of "McCrackin" was passed on into the hands of Seward, 
Secretary of State, who at once acted on the President's sugges- 
tion, wrote a formal note to several of the accused officials, quot- 
ing some of the writer's assertions of what they had said, and ask- 
ing them whether they had, or had not, thus spoken. Dr. Holmes 
holds that any self-respecting private gentleman might well won- 
der who could send such queries, whether he had spoken in a 
"malignant" or "oifensive" manner against the President, or 
"railed shamefully" against him; "but it was a letter of this kind 
which was sent by the Secretary of State to the Minister Pleni- 
potentiary to the Empire of Austria." 

The high-spirited Motley instantly replied. As to his American 
feelings he appeals to his record (his brave unofficial services in 
England, to enlighten hostile or ignorant public opinion at the 
outbreak of the Civil War, should be recalled) ; he denounces the 
accusations, and blushes that they should have been uttered, or 
considered possible; but he does not hesitate to say with regard to 
what his private opinions are on home questions, and especially 
on Reconstruction. "These, in the privacy of my own household 
and to occasional American visitors, I have not concealed. The 
great question now presenting itself for solution demands the con- 
scientious scrutiny of every American who loves his Country 
and believes in the human progress of which that Country is one 
of the foremost representatives. I have never thought, during my 



4 1 8 The Saturday Club 

residence at Vienna, that because I have the honour of being a 
public servant of the American people I am deprived of the right 
of discussing within my own walls the gravest subjects that can 
interest freemen. A Minister of the United States does not cease 
to be a citizen of the United States as deeply interested as others 
in all that relates to the welfare of his Country." 

Thus he denied the charges, claimed his right, and tendered his 
resignation. Secretary Seward wrote that "his answer was satis- 
factory"; but the President, on reading over the last paragraph 
of Motley's letter (in which he begged respectfully to resign his 
post), without waiting to learn what Seward proposed to do, ex- 
claimed, "Well, let him go!" and Seward did not read to him, or 
send, the despatch which he had written to Motley. 

Motley, however, highly esteemed in Austria and in Holland 
as statesman and scholar, pursued his literary studies, and did 
not return to America until June, il 



As, early in the year, so in its last month, Longfellow was urg- 
ing Sumner to be the champion of justice and comity in procuring 
the passage of a law of international copyright which had long 
been sorely needed. 

Longfellow received from the Italian Charge d'Affalres In 
Washington the announcement that King Victor Emmanuel had, 
with high compliments for his talents, conferred upon him the 
grade of Cavaliere in his order of Saints Maurezio and Lazzaro. 
Longfellow, acknowledging the letter with all courtesy wrote: — 

" If, as an American citizen, a Protestant, and Republican, I 
could consistently accept such an Order of Knighthood, there is 
no one from whom I would more willingly receive it than from the 
Restorer of the Unity of Italy — a sacred cause which has, and 
always has had, my most sincere and fervent sympathy. 

" I trust, therefore, that you will not regard it as the slight- 
est disrespect either to your Sovereign or to yourself, if, under 
these circumstances,! feel myself constrained to decline the honour 
proposed. 

" With expressions of great regard and consideration, I remain, 

"Your obedient servant." 



i866 419 

For thirty years Mr. Emerson had had it in mind "to write 
the Natural History of Reason," This year he put together some 
of his notes "dotting a fragmentary curve of isolated observations 
on the Natural Method of Mental Phenomena," without dogma- 
tism. The course was announced in the autumn. Mr. James was 
much amused and, writing to Mrs. Fields, asked in a postscript: 
"Who contrived the comical title for E.'s lectures."* — 'Philosophy 
of the People ' ! May it not have been a joke of J. T. F.'s t It would 
be no less absurd for Emerson himself to think of philosophizing 
than for the rose to think of botanizing. He is the divinely pom- 
pous rose of the philosophic garden, gorgeous with colour and fra- 
grance; so what a sad lookout for tulip and violet and lily, and 
the humbler grasses, if the rose should turn out philosophic gar- 
dener as well." 

In this year Dr. Jeffries Wyman was chosen a member of the 
Club. 



JEFFRIES WYMAN 

In the pleasant village of Chelmsford, Jeffries Wyman was born 
in August, 1 8 14. His father was a country doctor of such char- 
acter, skill, and good repute that when, in his later years, the 
McLean Asylum for the Insane was established in Somerville he 
was chosen as Resident Physician. The active country boy was 
eagerly searching for creatures and specimens, and learning facts 
such as interested him in Chelmsford woods and along the Merri- 
mac. He was sent to Exeter Academy, where he did not shine in 
the prescribed studies; but the boys were interested in him and 
his collections. The Harvard curriculum of classics and mathe- 
matics with elementary courses in chemistry and natural phi- 
losophy did not afford much grist to his mill, though in class or in 
the field or the library he knew what was for him. It is interesting 
to know that he graduated number fifty in a class of fifty-three. 
Of course the Medical School gave him the opportunities that he 
naturally desired. Dr. John Collins Warren made him his Demon- 
strator of Anatomy. There can be no doubt that he was a good 
one. Wyman took his degree as Doctor of Medicine in 1837. Dur- 
ing his medical studies, and perhaps in the years immediately 
following, the youth eked out his slender resources by becoming 
a member of the Boston Fire Department, was noted for his 
prompt answer in person to the alarm, and "ran with the old tub." 
Though poor he was cheerful and independent. He cared for sci- 
entific investigation and seemed to have practised his profession 
for a very short time, or not at all. 

Research work is not "paying," in the common use of the word, 
though a Wyman or an Agassiz believed such a life profitable 
to the world and delightful to him who pursues it. Material and 
apparatus make it a source of expense. Fortunately Wyman's 
fertile mind and delicate and skilful hand devised and made what 
he needed. Once wishing to demonstrate to his audience in 
a large hall an exceedingly delicate movement — the ciliary mo- 
tion, like waving rye, of the microscopic epithelium of a frog's 



.fll 



'g- 



^m ,i! ^) 




y^ff^ies TVyman 421 

windpipe — he contrived a cunning instrument that made the 
motion visible to all. Wyman early established a name in the 
scientific world by his published contributions of papers, clear and 
novel. Friends of Dr. Rufus Wyman, after his death, already 
recognizing his son's calibre, and aware of his very limited means, 
gladly and unasked gave pecuniary aid, which he, recognizing it 
as a contribution to Science, not to him, simply accepted. 

Two years after taking his medical degree, Wyman was chosen 
Curator of the Lowell Institute, and the following year lectured 
there. The gift from his father's friends made it possible for him 
to go abroad and follow the lectures of the great physiologists in 
Paris, and in London to hear Owen and study his collections of 
comparative anatomy. It was not merely dry bones that Wyman 
cared for; it was rather vital processes and the advances made 
by living organisms through adaptation. 

Soon after his return from Europe Wyman was called to teach 
Anatomy in Richmond, Virginia. After four years, he returned 
to Cambridge to fill the position of Hersey Professor of Anatomy 
in the Medical School. Wherever he went his keen eyes were open 
for specimens for his growing collection of comparative anatomy, 
or, better, zoology. 

Dr. Wyman was tall and slender; his look bespoke him a scholar 
rather than an athlete, though his eye was quick and his motions 
alert. His devotion to his experiments whether with scalpel, 
microscope, or chemical reagents, or coarser bone-boiling, kept 
him too long indoors under unhealthy conditions. This resulted 
in lung threatenings, and southward winter excursions, with his 
eager collecting, became essential to him. Mr. John M. Forbes 
invited him on more than one occasion to join him in a refreshing 
hunting trip. Walking along the banks of the great, gleaming 
St. John's River they came suddenly on a huge alligator dozing. 
Mr. Forbes fired, and at close range. The monster, though badly 
wounded, started for his native element, but a few feet away, 
below the steep bank. In an instant Wyman was astride of 
him, probably behind the forelegs, and just as he was reaching 
the edge, drove his hunting-knife between the scales, and with 
anatomist's security, between the base of the skull and the first 



42 2 'T'he Saturday Club 

vertebra, instantly severing the medulla oblongata, the vital 
nexus. Exact knowledge was safety and power. He knew just 
how far the furious sweep of the tail could reach. At Wyman's 
lectures we used to see the great skeleton, suspended aloft, of the 
dragon, but the Saint George never mentioned the fight. Years 
afterward Mr. Forbes told me the story. On this occasion Wyman 
began the investigation of the Florida shell-heaps. Mr. Robert 
Bennet Forbes, the younger of the brothers, on another occasion 
took Dr. Wyman, and, I think, Mr. George Peabody, on his yacht 
to the Antilles and the northern shore of South America where 
Surinam toads, their infants in pouches on their backs, and 
"jiggers," and huge constrictors or small venomous serpents 
could be dissected or bottled. Most careful observation of the 
life-history and modes of function of all these creatures preceded 
the minute study of their structure. So Wyman's knowledge and 
collections grew apace. But where to put them was the question. 
He bided his time. 

In these days, Pouchet, of Rouen, had startled Science, resting 
assured in the doctrine Omne vivum ah ovo, by his Theorie positive 
de Fovulation spontanee, which stirred to investigation the young 
peasant-born Pasteur, who had just taken his degree. Between 
these champions an honourable contest began. For years each 
capped the other's latest experiment by one with more subtle pre- 
cautions against error. Wyman himself began experimenting, as 
always, with open mind and great technical ingenuity. In the end 
he found that in his sterilized liquids no signs of organic life would 
appear, however long they were kept, if properly sealed, and after- 
wards boiled for five consecutive hours, and his independent re- 
search confirmed Pasteur's result. 

Meantime Darwin's unorthodox theories had startled not only 
the religious, but the naturalists. Wyman read them with interest 
the more keen because of his own remarkable knowledge of com- 
parative anatomy, its foreshadowings, tendencies; also its super- 
fluous relics of organs once needed. 

At the college, he gave, at this period, a course (elective) on 
Comparative Anatomy, but he fortunately construed his office so 
liberally that Comparative Physiology was included, and he gave 



yeffries TVyman 423 

to us students of that day, who had no knowledge of the animal 
structure and function, not only the elements in a most interesting 
way, but a brief and clear account of the state of the contest on 
both battle-fields of the day, namely, that of generation and of 
evolution. The evidence from experiment of each contestant was 
fairly given. He liked to have us come down and question him 
after the lecture — an unknown occurrence in any other class- 
room — and it was natural that we should say, "And what do 
yon believe.^" (having heard how hotly Agassiz opposed Darwin's 
teaching); but he always said with quiet modesty, "The evidence 
is not all in. We must suspend judgment until it is, and hold our 
minds open." 

Our good Dr. Asa Gray, orthodox church member as he was, 
had great respect for this admirable man of science. In a letter 
to Darwin he calls him "my crony, Wyman," and says: "You 
should study Wyman's observations in his own papers. He is 
always careful to keep his inferences close to his facts, and is as 
good an experimenter, I judge, as he is an observer. ... I think 
he has not at all pronounced in favour of spontaneous generation, 
but I will bet on his experiments against Pasteur any day." - Of 
course this referred to his ingenuity and skill, not to partizanship. 

The good Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, a man of a very different 
type from Wyman, impulsive to rashness, demonstrative, a born 
reformer, came upon him in the Saranac wilds. Yet they met on 
common ground. He wrote: "The woods! They are the elixir of 
life for me, and I was thankful to meet Dr. Jeffries Wyman here, 
among the wilds, for the same object as myself, namely, not for 
'sport,' but for communion with Nature. He is now at a pretty 
camp, where he passed, three years since, one of the happiest 
weeks of his life with his wife, who recently died. . . . He is alone 
with one guide. ... I like him. He is learned, and loves truth. 
He is free, and is no bigot, though a deeply religious man. I never 
meet him but I think it a Godsend; the moral and intellectual 
qualities are both so highly trained, and he is such a fund of 
information. He has counted no less than forty species of birds 
around his camp. He is quietly studying the sand-waves as they 
roll upon his little beach, and argues back from them to the ripple- 



424 The Saturday Club 

marks of ancient sandstone. He has measured the largest, or 
among the largest of boulders in the known world, now resting 
on the shores of the lake. . . . Finally and naturally, we turned 
from nature to the God of nature, and we discoursed on the tend- 
ency of modern materialistic philosophy to refer all force to the 
sun. ... I was glad he agreed with me as to the utter folly of 
stopping short at any bound, save the Invisible Living God." 

A few years later, Mr. Emerson had the opportunity of acquaint- 
ance with Wyman in the same region, the camp on Follansbee 
Pond. He sketched him in his notebook thus : — 

JEFFRIES WYMAN 
Science and sense 
Without pretence, 
He did what he essayed. 
His level gun will hit the white, 
His cautious tongue will speak the right, 
Of that be none afraid. 

Stillman, of course, knew him at the camp. He says: "Amongst 
the evolutionists whom I have known there have been several 
who did not accept without modification the theory of natural 
selection, and supplemented it by design, amongst whom I may 
mention the great American botanist, Asa Gray, — one of the 
most distinguished of Darwinians, — who accepted the method 
of evolution as the modus operandi of the Supreme Intelligence. 
Professor Jeffries Wyman, the associate of Agassiz in the Uni- 
versity, who was one of the doctors of our Adirondack company, 
accepted in a qualified manner the theory of evolution, but his 
premature and lamented death set the seal to his conclusions 
before they were complete, though I have always had the impres- 
sion that his position was similar to that of Gray. To my question 
one day as to his conclusions, he replied, — with a caution char- 
acteristic of the man, and very unlike the resolute attitude of 
Agassiz before the question which the Sphinx proposes still, — 
'An evolution of some sort there certainly was,' but nothing more 
would he say. The loss to American Science in his death can never 
be estimated, for his mind was of that subtle and inductive nature 
which is needed for such study, fine to poetic delicacy, penetrating 



yeffries JVyman 425 

with all the acumen of a true scientific imagination, but modest 
to excess, and personally so attached to Agassiz that he would with 
reluctance give expression to a diflference from him, though that 
he did differ was no occasion for abatement of their mutual regard. 
Wyman's was the poetry of scientific research, Agassiz's its prose, 
and they offered a remarkable example of mental antithesis, from 
which, had Wyman lived, much might have been expected through 
their association in study. Wyman had all the delicacy of a fine 
feminine organization, wedded unfortunately to a fragile consti- 
tution, but the friendship he held for the robust and dominating 
character of the great Switzer was to the utmost reciprocated. 
And Agassiz's disposition was as generous as large. He had abso- 
lutely no scientific jealousy or sectarian feeling." 

At about the time when the Civil War began, the friendly doc- 
tors, Wyman and Weir Mitchell, were investigating serpent- 
poison with no purpose, beyond pure science, than beneficence. 
No venom was used in denunciation by Wyman at that excited 
period; he only laments the secession of Virginia, in a letter to 
Mitchell, "because we have both lost our easiest supply of rattle- 
snakes." He congratulates himself that he still had the bullfrog,^ 
and regrets that the rattlesnakes had not been allowed to vote 
on the question of secession. 

No one of us undergraduates who attended Wyman's course, 
so impersonally and modestly given, with ingenious yet simplest 
original experiments, failed to be interested. "Symmetry and 
Homology in Animal Structure" did not sound exciting. Yet 
when this master showed us prevailing right-and-left symmetry 
and also, in some low articulates, a fore-and-aft symmetry as 
perfect as was possible and yet have the organism not paralyzed 
through having a captain at each end, — that stirred us. But 
when he threw some iron-filings on a thin sheet of pasteboard with 
a straight magnet beneath it, then tapped the pasteboard gently 
and the filings sprang into a complete symmetry on each side of 
the long axis, never crossing it; and into two centres of arrange- 

* The bullfrog, because of its size, was much valued for animal experimentation. No 
such large frog is found in Europe, and Agassiz obtained a great many valuable contribu- 
tions from foreign savants for his Museum in exchange for large consignments of bullfrogs. 



426 



The Saturday Club 



ment, fore and aft of the transverse axis, suggesting the shoulder- 
and the pelvic-girdles with fore- and hind-leg suggestions, and 
perhaps a tendency to round into a head at each end — • that 
thrilled us. It was to us what has been called the "I see!" 
method, making us take the leap to a conclusion. But the 
master quietly said that this was interesting and suggestive. He 

then took a Y-shaped mag- 
net and repeated the exper- 
iment. Instantly we had 
the sketch of the " Ritta 
Christina monstrosity" — 
twin babies with but one 
pair of legs and separated 
into individuals above the 
pelvis. 

Wyman's scientific pa- 
pers — always reports of 
original observations stat- 
ed with beautiful clearness, 
never contentious, never 
with hasty generalizations 
— were abundant and re- 
ceived with respect in Eu- 
rope as here. His pupil, 
Dr. Wilder, speaking of his 
patient caution in judging 
any theory founded on what seemed new indications, says: "His 
statements were always received as gospel by both parties to a 
controversy. He might not tell the whole truth, for he might not 
see it at the time, but what he did tell was nothing but the truth 
so far as it went. He did not allow his imagination to outstrip 
his observation." 

In 1866, Mr. George Peabody, whom Dr. Holmes called, "The 
friend of all his race — God bless him!" endowed the Museum 
of American Archaeology, having particular reference to the an- 
tiquities illustrating the history of the aborigines of America. 
Wyman, who had himself made extensive researches in this field, 




y^ff^ies TVyman 427 

was seen to be the one man for its Curator. Dr. Holmes thus tells 
of his zeal and ingenuity: "How many skulls, broken so as to 
be past praying for, he has made whole; how many Dagons, or 
other divinities, shattered past praying to, he has restored entire 
to their pedestals, let the myope who can find the cracks where his 
cunning hand has joined the fragments tell us. His manipulation 
of a fractured bone from a barrow or a shell-heap was as wonder- 
ful in its way as the dealing of Angelo Mai with the scraps of a 
tattered palimpsest." 

On one occasion Dr. Wyman, accompanied by Elliot Cabot, 
came up to Concord to examine a spot on a bluff above the Mus- 
ketaquid where, just below the thin turf, rather extensive layers 
of charcoal and calcined mussel-shells show long-repeated Indian 
feasts. It especially interested the Doctor because, at that time, 
it was the only "shell-heap" which he had seen where the in- 
sipid fresh-water mussel formed the fish course of the banquet — 
possibly it was on an Indian "day of fasting, humiliation, and 
prayer." As we dug with hoes or fingers along the edge of the 
bluff, Dr. Wyman picked up a brown, moulded, triangular ob- 
ject resembling a bit of decayed knot of wood. Instantly, "Ulna 
of a deer!" exclaimed he; then, blushing like a girl, as if he had 
been "showing off," he, as it were, apologized to me by saying, 
"They seem to have been a tit-bit. I often find them in shell- 
heaps." It was an incident characteristic of his ready knowledge 
and modesty. 

Dr. Holmes paid this high tribute to the memory of Wyman: 
"His word would be accepted on a miracle." Of the latter years of 
his friend he said: "So he went on working . . . quietly, happily, 
not stimulated by loud applause, not striking the public eye with 
any glitter to be seen afar off, but with a roild halo about him, 
which was as real to those with whom he had his daily walk and 
conversation as the nimbus round a saint's head in an altar-piece." 

His strength gradually ebbed, and he died at Beth'iehem, New 
Hampshire, September 4, 1874, having just completed 'nis sixtieth 
year. 

E. W. E. 



Chapter XIV 
1867 

We know the arduous strife, the eternal laws 
To which the triumph of all good is given. 
High sacrifice, and labour without pause. 
Even to the death: else wherefore should the eye 
Of man converse with immortality? 

Wordsworth 

IN Longfellow's Memoir, by his brother, is recorded: "On New 
Year's Day Longfellow was greeted by a letter from Tennyson 
with these pleasant words: 'We English and Americans should all 
be brothers as none other among nations can be; and some of us, 
come what may, will always be so, I trust.' " 

Mr. Fields's record shows a scant attendance at the first Club 
dinner of the year. Mr. Lincoln, then Mayor of Boston, was his 
guest, whom he speaks of as "a capital mayor and a gentleman." 

On the 27th of February, Longfellow's sixtieth birthday, Lowell 
brought and read this tribute: — 

"I need not praise the sweetness of his song, 
Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds 
Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he wrong 
The new moon's mirrored skiff, he slides along, 
Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds. 

*'With loving breath of all the winds his name 
Is blown about the world, but to his friends 
A sweeter secret hides behind his fame. 
And Love steals shyly through the loud acclaim 
To mumur cT J^od bless you ! and there ends. 

"h, I muse backward up the checkered years 
Wherein so much was given, so much was lost, 
Blessin gs in both kinds, such as cheapen tears, — 
But bush! this is not for profaner ears; 

t,et them drink molten pearls nor dream the cost. 

Some suck up poison from a sorrow's core. 

As naught but nightshade grew upon Earth's ground; 



i867 



429 



Love turned all his to heart's-ease, and the more 
Fate tried his bastions, she but forced a door 
Leading to sweeter manhood and more sound. 

"Even as a wind-waved fountain's swaying shade 
Seems of mixed race, a gray wraith shot with sun, 
So through his trial faith translucent rayed 
Till darkness, half disnatured so, betrayed 
A heart of sunshine that would fain o'errun. 

"Surely if skill in song the shears may stay. 
And of its purpose cheat the charmed abyss, 

If our poor life be lengthened by a lay. 

He shall not go, although his presence may, 
And the next age in praise shall double this. 

"Long days be his, and each as lusty-sweet 

As gracious natures find his song to be; 
May Age steal on with softly-cadenced feet 
Falling in music, as for him were meet 

Whose choicest verse is harsher-toned than he!" 

In May occurred, as Colonel Charles Francis Adams tells us in 
his memoir of R. H. Dana, "w^hat promised for a time to be one 
of the great state trials of history — the arraignment of Jeffer- 
son Davis on the charge of high treason " before the United States 
Circuit Court at Richmond. Dana v^^as appointed as counsel for 
the United States. He was associated with William M. Evarts. 
"Mr. Davis had, since his capture, been held in close confinement 
at Fortress Monroe, and it was felt the time had come when he 
should either be tried or released on bail. The course finally pur- 
sued towards him is matter of history. . . . That, under all the 
circumstances, it was the proper, and, indeed, the only course to 
be pursued, no one longer questions. At the moment Dana, as 
counsel, strongly recommended it; for, though necessarily in any 
trial which might have taken place, he must have occupied a large 
position in the public eye, he was too genuine a man and too good 
a lawyer, as well as patriot, to weigh in the balance a little cheap 
personal notoriety or professional reputation agalns*" the almost 
national ignominy involved in having the last scene (,,' the great 
civil struggle fought out over a criminal charge agalns . an indi- 



43 o The Saturday Club 

vldual, to be tried before a petit jury of Virginians in the United 
States District Court-Room at Richmond."^ 

Mr. Forbes — who, early in the spring, had travelled in the 
South, taking great pains to find out how much real loyal sen- 
timent was there among the local planters, and how the young 
men, soldiers, and others, who had bought land and were trying 
the experiment of themselves becoming planters,^ were getting 
on — became very anxious about the Reconstruction problem, as 
were also Dana and Governor Andrew. They wished that some 
of our best citizens, patriotic and also tactful, like Charles G. 
Loring, Martin Brimmer, and J. IngersoU Bowditch, should meet 
in sane and civil conference on the status quo some of the leading 
Southern citizens. 

In the end of May, Forbes wrote to C. G. Loring of the "great 
need of vigorous organization for the coming four months. The 
Rebel States will send thirty to fifty more Representatives than 
before. If we let them send all Democrats, we increase immeasur- 
ably the danger of the closely contested States of the North going 
wrong at the next election. With moderate exertion we can divide 
the South now and neutralize the power for evil." This corre- 
spondence, and active exertion which followed, succeeded in form- 
ing a Reconstruction Association within a week, and immediately a 
meeting was held at Governor Bullock's to complete arrangements, 
raise funds, and appoint a committee to go to Richmond and 
meet the Virginia committee. It appears that the committee re- 
turned from Richmond quite cheered up; also with their recep- 
tion in Philadelphia; "and all agree that the convention was 
brought into harmony by the outside influences thus applied." 

On the 1st of May, Emerson writes in his journal the names of 
fifty friends and relatives to whom he is appropriately sending 
copies of his May Day — the second volume of his poems — on 
that happy festival. 

1 The charge of complicity in the assassination of Lincoln was, happily, dropped. 
There was no evidence. 

2 Among these were Colonel Daniel Chamberlain (later Governor of South Carolina), 
Major Henry L. Higginson, Mr. Edward M. Cary, Captain Channing Clapp, Lieutenants 
Garth Wilkinson James and Robertson James, the sons of Mr. Henry James. 



i867 

He also wrote in the journal: — 

"Nature sings, — 



431 



He lives not who can refuse me, 
All my force saith, Come and use me! 
A May-day sun, a May-day rain 
And all the zone is green again." 

Fifty years before, Mr. Emerson had startled many of his hear- 
ers assembled at Cambridge to hear the annual Phi Beta Kappa 
Oration, and, the next year, shocked or pained many by the 
message which, after earnest thought, he felt bound to give, in 
response to their call, to the young men graduating from the 
Harvard Divinity School. Now, after a half-century, the doors of 
the University were once more opened to him and again he gave 
the Phi Beta Kappa Oration. 

The kindly and wise Professor Gurney, who in this year was 
chosen into the Club, makes this comment on the occasion in a 
letter written to Miss Jane Norton: "You have seen the report 
of Mr. Emerson in the Daily [Advertiser]. Unhappily, as is the 
way with Mr. E.'s reporters, he missed some of the most striking 
sentences. They were not as many as when he is at his best, 
and I was not sorry that your brother remained among the Ash- 
field hills and views. They are more unfailing spirits than Mr. 
Emerson, even, whose face gave me more pleasure to see than his 
words to hear.^ I had hoped that, as his mind went back to the 
day when he before addressed the Phi Beta Kappa, ran over the 
spiritual growth of the generation since — so much more striking 
than all its material progress of which we hear so much — in which 
he had been so potent, that he would be inspired to tell us how 
the change impressed him. Very likely the story can be told 
better from without, and one would like, perhaps, to hear Mont 
Blanc or Tournay Cathedral revealing, even unconsciously, how 
they have ennobled men. Mr. Emerson's influence seems to me 
to have resembled that of some such masterpiece of nature or 

' Unhappily for this occasion, when Mr. Emerson rose to read his address, he found that 
he had lost his glasses on which he was becoming dependent. He had so much difficulty 
that it marred his delivery, and during the first half-hour he struggled on discouraged. 
Fortunately some kind soul then lent him glasses and the last part of the address went 
well. 



43 2 The Saturday Club 

art. The burden of his tale, too, is ever the same, but how much 
fresher it remains than the variety of any of his contemporaries. 
Think, then, of the work of a great architect who speaks to men 
with the same distinctness, the same purity, the same elevation 
for thirty times thirty years. As I think of it, it makes me sad 
to believe that your brother's vision of what might be done here 
or at Yale will not meet a sympathetic response. Let us believe 
that men will not answer his call to provide for the welfare of 
future generations because they are more concerned with the 
needs of the present.^ 

" I wish you could have seen Mr. Lowell preside at the dinner. 
He is a braw man, indeed, when he is arrayed for such State 
occasions, and alike unapproachable in wit and courtesy." 

As from 1866 through 1867 the friction-heat between President 
Johnson and Congress grew greater, the generous mind of the 
ex-Governor grew more aloof from the controversial proceedings. 
Mr. Henry G. Pearson in his biography quotes him as having said 
that all the combatants "will have to yield something of what 
they have said in favour of what, in the calm depth of their own 
souls, they will all find themselves to believe: and in this remark 
I include President Johnson himself." He frankly said what he 
considered the necessary conditions of peace : "The black man must 
be treated as a citizen, or he must be exterminated. The ex-Rebels 
must be treated as citizens, or they must be exterminated. Am- 
nesty to the Rebels and political rights to the black man consti- 
tute the obverse and reverse of the shield. Any scheme which 
omits either is empiricism and not philosophy." The friction of 
a one-sided course of legislation and action being thus removed, 
he believed the race question would solve itself naturally. 

The good ex-Governor interested himself in, in fact set on foot, 
the Land Agency, confident that the economic would be a better 
road to follow than the political. Thus, as has been said, he tried 
to help the Governor of Alabama to get loans from Northern 

1 Probably Mr. Norton had urged that, in building the Hall to keep before the minds of 
coming generations the spirit and sacrifice of the young scholars in the war for Freedom 
and Country, the Alumni should remember the lavish munificence of Florence in creating 
a building that should cheer and elevate her citizens for ages. 



i867 



433 



merchants and others, but the bitterness of the strife still rankled 
on both sides, and the experiments of Northern ex-soldiers, now 
colonists and planters, resulted "in loss of the entire investment; 
in many cases of their entire fortunes." 

As Sumner's senatorial term neared its close, many good Massa- 
chusetts men wished that Andrew should succeed him. But An- 
drew would not think of having his name used in opposition to his 
honoured friend. Some mischief-makers tried to make trouble 
between them by false quotations of Sumner. In answer came 
a prompt denial from the Senator, expressing his long affection 
and respect, adding: "I have often said that whenever Andrew 
desires my place, I shall not be in his way. . . . Yet there are two 
objects which I should like to see accomplished before I quit; 
one is the establishment of our Government on the principles of 
the Declaration of Independence, and the other is the revision 
of international maritime law. But I would give up readily op- 
portunities which I value. If I could In this way gratify an old 
friend and a valuable public character like Andrew." 

The Presidential election was to occur In the next year, and the 
people at large were already feeling that Grant should now lead 
them, and, in October, hopes were excited in Massachusetts that 
for once a first-class man should hold the office of Vice-President — 
their own Andrew. Diis aliter visum. 

Although the Governor — as It was natural still to call one 
whose rectitude, courage, and strong sense had nobly upheld the 
honour of Massachusetts through the years of the great war — had 
been refreshed by a month's driving journey with his friend Cyrus 
Woodman in New Brunswick, his strength was intermittent and 
gave warning of danger. But he worked bravely on until, on the 
30th of October, his release came from a brain-stroke almost 
as mercifully sudden as those of his young soldiers shot dead in 
battle. 

Mr. Pearson, his biographer, tells us how, when the news spread 
to the homes of his humble neighbours on the reverse slope of 
Beacon Hill, they, sharing the universal feeling of "sorrow less for 
the power than the goodness that was gone from the world, . . . 
crowded the street before the house; during the funeral services 



434 'The Saturday Club 

they stood humbly in the rear of the church and outside it, and 
walked by the hearse all the way to Mount Auburn." 

Governor Andrew was not of old Boston lineage. He had come 
from the pleasant Hingham shore and made his way in the city, 
and while none questioned his loyalty and integrity, many leading 
citizens had been anxious as to his cool judgment and whether 
he was a man to measure with the great emergency that imme- 
diately faced him. But these very men — ■ Colonel Henry Lee, for 
instance, who gave most valuable service on his staff — came to 
speak of him thus: — 

" Governor Andrew, our great ' War-Governor,' — the Governor 
who was the first to prepare for war, the first to prepare for peace, 
the first to urge the policy of emancipation as a war measure, the 
first to insist upon the right and duty of the coloured men to bear 
arms, feeling that not only the liberties of the coloured men, but 
the destinies of the Country itself were Involved In this question. 
When, after two years' delay, the official sanction was granted, he 
hastened to organize regiments, to watch over them and contend 
for their rights, — promised and withheld. 

"While we were often moody and vexed and dejected, he al- 
ways seemed cheery and confident. . . . The Lord helped his un- 
belief; he maintained his own hope and faith and encouraged his 
weaker brethren. 

"President Lincoln Is reported to have exclaimed, upon Gover- 
nor Andrew's leaving his room after one of his many visits : 'There 
goes the Governor who gives me the most help and the most 
trouble.'" 

He was In the habit of visiting New York and conferring with 
Southerners at the New York Hotel; had he lived, his media- 
tion would have been important. "As to his political sagacity, it 
seemed to me marvellous. He had a passionate love of his Coun- 
try and of its people; he had but to look into his own heart to read 
theirs; his eye was single, his whole body full of light; he scouted 
all schemes of party, all passing popular impulses, and boldly 
advocated measures which would receive the ultimate and per- 
manent approval of the people; hence his death was a great relief 



i867 



435 



to scheming and petty politicians and a great grief to unpartisan, 
patriotic citizens. 

"His farewell address to the Legislature surprised even his 
friends by its breadth of view and its boldness; he laid down 
the conditions, the only conditions, upon which peace and good- 
will could be established, the conditions which, after ten years* 
floundering and theorizing, were finally adopted. He had that 
touch of nature which makes the whole world kin; his cordial 
frankness disarmed prejudice and inspired confidence and friend- 
ship, so that when he died, among the men who first came for- 
ward to the relief of his family were some who had regarded his 
accession to office with dismay and contempt. The most pathetic 
and heartfelt obituary of him was in the columns of the Post on 
the day of his funeral." 

In his charming memoir of Colonel Lee, Mr. John T. Morse 
says: — 

"Governor Andrew now dwells in the serene atmosphere of 
apotheosis; the children of the men of that generation have put 
him into Valhalla. But he seemed no candidate for such blissful 
quarters when he was elected Governor. Boston's high society dis- 
trusted him as a fanatic, an enthusiast, a sentimentalist, a dreamer 
of dreams very objectionable in the peculiar circumstances of the 
times. They doubted his practical good sense and deemed his 
election unfortunate for the Country. 

"Work began at once. But it is needless to repeat the hun- 
dred-times-told tale of Governor Andrew's military preparations, 
the glory whereof has since been comfortably adopted by Massa- 
chusetts as her own, — by right of eminent domain, perhaps, — 
whereas in fact nearly all Massachusetts derided and abused him 
at the time, and the glory was really as much his individual prop- 
erty as were his coat and hat." 

The mourning for the Governor was in no wise official or per- 
functory. Men as widely apart in temperament and in point of 
view as Francis W. Bird and Robert C. Winthrop learned to trust 
and honour him. Mr. Bird, speaking of the friends. Dr. Howe and 
Governor Andrew, and their modesty, said: "Of all the great and 
good men whom I have known John A. Andrew was the only one 



i 



43^ 'The Saturday Club 

who seemed so unconscious that his own agency was of the slight- 
est importance to the work in which he was engaged, and yet 
both devoted themselves to their work with as much earnestness 
and zeal as if they felt that the result depended upon their own 
personal eflForts. Duty was theirs; results were with God." 

This is the poem that Whittier sent when the statue of the 
loved and honoured War-Governor was unveiled in Hingham in 
1875:- 

"Behold the shape our eyes have known! 
It lives once more in changeless stone; 
So looked in mortal face and form 
Our guide through peril's deadly storm. 

"But hushed the beating heart we knew, 
That heart so tender, brave, and true, 
Firm as the rooted mountain rock. 
Pure as the quarry's whitest block! 

"Not his beneath the blood-red star 
To win the soldier's envied scar; 
Unarmed he battled for the right. 
In Duty's never-ending fight. 

"Unconquered will, unslumbering eye. 
Faith such as bids the martyr die; 
The prophet's glance, the master's hand 
To mould the work his foresight planned. 

"These were his gifts; what Heaven had lent 
For justice, mercy, truth, he spent. 
First to avenge the traitorous blow, 
And first to lift the vanquished foe. 

"Lo, thus he stood; in danger's strait 
The pilot of the Pilgrim State!" 

To go back a little, Longfellow in his journal in the autumn of 
this year had given a glimpse of the Club and its guests, as well 
as the honours paid to the poet for his faithful interpretation of 
Dante; also other notes of interesting doings in Boston in which 
the members appear: — 

"October 26th. At the Club dinner, many strangers. Among 



i867 



437 



them, Lord Amberley, Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Vogeli. Lord A. is son 
of Earl Russell. Mr. H. is in the Colonial Office; . . . Mr. V. is a 
Frenchman, living in Brazil, who has come to Cambridge to trans- 
late Agassiz's new book on Brazil. . . . During dinner, a wreath of 
choice flowers was brought to Longfellow from Mrs. Fields, Mrs. 
Stowe, and Lady Amberley. . . . 

"November 20th. Dined with Dr. Holmes. On my way, stopped 
at the Parker House to see Dickens (just arrived from England) 
whom I found very well and most cordial. It was right pleasant 
to see him again, after so many years — twenty-five! He looks 
somewhat older, but is as elastic and quick in his movement as 
ever. At Holmes's we had the Earl of Camperdown, Lord Morley, 
and Mr. Cowper; all very agreeable gentlemen. 

"21st. Young Holmes called with Lord C, who brings me a 
letter from Motley, and whom I like very much. Dined with 
Fields — a dinner of welcome to Dickens. 

.'-"22nd. In town. Passed through the Public Garden, and saw 
Story's statue of Everett, which is good. 

"28th. Thanksgiving-day. Dickens came out to a quiet family 
dinner. 

" 29th. In the afternoon Agassiz came to read us the sheets of 
his closing chapters on Brazil." 

I forget which one of the Club it was who gave this reminis- 
cence :" Charles Dickens dined with us during his second visit in 
1867. He compounded a 'jug' (anglice), or pitcher as we call it, 
of the gin punch for which his father was famous. No witch at her 
incantation could be more rapt in her task than Dickens was in his 
as he stooped over the drink he was mixing." 

Fields delighted in sporting with Dickens, with whom he was 
on most intimate terms, as well appears in his Yesterdays with 
Authors. -I 

At the Dickens dinner mentioned above, Mr. Grattan, the 
English Consul, gracefully said that "the Chairman's four Fices 
were as good as the four virtues of any other man." Holmes, 
Hillard, Ellis Gray Loring, and Thomas J. Stevenson were the 
vice-presidents. 

Hard as it was to draw Whittier from his country home, Dickens 



43 8 "The Saturday Club 

nearly accomplished this feat, unintentionally. He was the guest 
of Mr. and Mrs. Fields while giving his readings in Boston. Mrs. 
Fields tells the story: "To our surprise, he wrote to ask if he could 
possibly get a seat to hear him. 'I see there is a crazy rush for 
tickets.' A favourable answer was despatched to him as soon as 
practicable, but he had already repented of the indiscretion. 'My 
dear Fields,' he wrote, 'up to the last moment I have hoped to 
occupy the seat so kindly promised me for this evening. But 
I find I must give it up. Gladden with it the heart of some poor 
wretch who dangled and shivered in vain in your long queue the 
other morning. I must read my Pickwick alone, as the Marchion- 
ess played cribbage.'" 

Mrs. Fields gives a delightful note on the subject of the popu- 
larity of Whittier s "Tent on the Beach." " 'Think,' he says, 'of 
bagging in this tent of ours an unsuspecting public at the rate 
of a thousand a day.^* This will never do. The swindle is awful. 
Barnum is a saint to us. I am bowed with a sense of guilt, 
ashamed to look an honest man in the face. But Nemesis is on 
our track; somebody will puncture our tent yet, and it will collapse 
like a torn balloon.'" 

In November, Ticknor and Fields, who had published Long- 
fellow's translation of the Divina Commedia^ gave a dinner to the 
poet in honour of the completion of this long task. For him it had 
been a resource for alleviation of overwhelming grief. To his 
friend the German poet Freiligrath he wrote: "Of what I have 
been through, during the last six years, I dare not venture to write 
even to you; it is almost too much for any man to bear and live. 
I have taken refuge in this translation of the Divine Comedy^ and 
this may give it perhaps an added interest in your sight." 

When one remembers how Longfellow and Lowell cared for the 
great Florentine's triple vision, a strange and moving contrast is 
found in Dr. Holmes's feeling. His correspondence with Mrs. 
Harriet Beecher Stowe — who had spiritually survived, unscathed, 
immersion of her family for generations in cruel Calvinism — 
shows how his tender and impressionable nature was haunted 
from childhood with sermons he had heard, or books read then. 

Writing to this lady in the end of this year and speaking of the 



i867 



439 



Dante readings at which he had been present, he says: "I beheve 
I did not go to one of the Inferno seances; [to but] one or two of 
the Purgatorio, the others all Paradiso. How often have I said, 
talking with Lowell, almost the same things you say about the 
hideousness, the savagery, of that mediaeval nightmare! Theodore 
of Abyssinia ought to sleep with it under his pillow, as Alexander 
slept with the Iliad." ^ 

Again Longfellow records: — 

''December, 1867. Saturday Club. William Everett there, 
who said that while his father was member of Congress and was 
at one time returning to Boston, he was stopped in the street as 
he passed through Philadelphia by a haggard man wrapped in a 
cloak. 'I am Aaron Burr,' said the figure, 'and I pray you to 
petition Congress to aid me in my misery.' Mr. Everett replied 
that the Member from his own District was the person to whom to 
apply. 'I know that,' was the sad rejoinder, 'but the others are 
all strangers to me. I pray you to help me.' After some reflection, 
Mr. Everett promised to try to do something in his behalf. For- 
tunately, however, he was released by death, before Congress was 
again in session. 

"Mr. Quincy^ was much interested in obtaining greater free- 
dom for the city for merchandise over the Western railroads." 

The Lyceum system at this period was a principal interest for 
a winter's evening alike in city and village throughout the land. 
From New England and New York it had spread far westward 
and somewhat southward, though into no "slave State" except in 
the city of St. Louis. Agassiz, Dana, Holmes, Whipple, Emerson, 
Sumner too on occasion, were glad thus to increase their incomes, 
and also try on their audiences their recent writings which, pruned, 
or enlarged, and polished, later appeared as essays. Dana, and 
particularly Holmes, disliked the process, especially the billeting 
in country taverns or in the chill best bedroom of the house of the 

' I remember hearing the good Doctor once, in a medical lecture, speak in an almost 
impassioned way of parents putting into the hands of imaginative children the Pilgrim's 
Progress of Bunyan, with its City of Destruction, and black, horned Apollyon barring 
Christian's way, and Giant Despair. Yet most children of our generation, I think, found 
it interesting. 

* Presumably our associate Edmund Quincy. 



44 o The Saturday Club 

"curator." Holmes's asthma, when away from his beloved city, 
often proved distressing, Emerson, though undergoing great ex- 
posure in long drives on wintry prairies, enjoyed seeing the grow- 
ing country and meeting the prospering sons of Concord farmers, 
and always returned refreshed. 

Holmes, this year, in an amusing letter to Fields from Mon- 
treal, on his way home from a varied experience, utters the follow- 
ing among many groans about his adventures on this tour: ^ — 

"I am as comfortable here as I can be, but I have earned my 
money, for I have had my full share of my old trouble. . . . Don't 
talk to me about taverns! There is just one genuine, decent thing 
occasionally to be had in them — namely, a boiled egg. The soups 
taste pretty good sometimes, but their sources are involved in a 
darker mystery than that of the Nile. Omelettes taste as if they 
had been carried in the waiter's hat, or fried in an old boot. I 
ordered scrambled eggs one day. It must be they had been 
scrambled for by somebody^ but who — who in possession of a 
sound reason could have scrambled for what I had set before me 
under that name .^ . . . Then the waiters with their napkins — what 
don't they do with those napkins ! Mention any one thing of which 
you think you can say with truth, ' Thai they do not do.' 

" I have really a fine parlour, but every time I enter it I perceive 
that 

Still, sad 'odour' of humanity 

which clings to it from my predecessor. . . . Every six months a 
tavern should burn to the ground with all its traps, 'its proper- 
ties,' its beds, its pots and kettles, and start afresh. ..." 

Mr. Emerson, brought up to hardihood, fulfilled his engage- 
ments regardless of comfort and often at serious risk. Safely 
arrived in St. Louis in mid-December, he writes in his journal: 
"Yesterday morning in bitter cold weather I had the pleasure of 
crossing the Mississippi in a skiff^ with Mr. , we the sole pas- 
sengers, and a man and a boy for oarsmen. I have no doubt they 
did their work better than the Harvard six could have done it, 
as much of the rowing was on the surface of fixed ice, in fault of 

^ Lije and Letters, by John Torrey Morse. 



i867 



441 



running water. But we arrived without other accident than be- 
coming almost fixed ice ourselves; but the long run to the Tepfer 
House, the volunteered rubbing of our hands by the landlord and 
clerks, and good fire restored us." 

During this year the only member chosen into the Club was 
Ephraim Whitman Gurney, charming man and interesting 
scholar. Professor of Latin in Harvard University. 



EPHRAIM WHITMAN GURNEY 

In preparing to write a sketch of a scholar, and a professor eminent 
in his day in the University for his varied attainments and his 
success in teaching, also in administrative duties — more than all 
this, a man who won the respect and, one may almost say, the 
affectionate regard of the body of the students for a quarter of a 
century — it comes with a shock to find that hardly a word of written 
record remains. In the College library one finds only the baldest 
notice of his death, and two papers contributed by him to a maga- 
zine.^ One of the best appointments that the University has ever 
made, his remembrance will pass away within twenty years when 
a few men, now elderly, die. 

Nathan Gurney and his wife, of Abington, moved to Boston, 
where, in February, 1829, their son Ephraim was born. It is said 
that while it had been the plan that he should enter some business, 
a wish to go to college sprang up from the seed sown by his reading 
and religious inquiry. He was then eighteen, but set to the work 
of preparation, and in sixteen months entered Harvard. He won 
good rank, and graduated in 1852. Then sickness interrupted his 
work for some few years. He made a broad plan of study, and, 
meanwhile, taught in private schools in Boston. In 1859, he was 
appointed Latin tutor at Cambridge and, it is said, doubted his 
fitness; but the fourth year from that time found him Assistant 
Professor. In the following year the writer, a sophomore, having 
passed from the teaching of the kindly George Noble, came into 
the even pleasanter atmosphere of Gurney's recitation-room. He 
understood boys, treated them in a friendly, companionable way, 
assuming that they were gentlemen, and could be interested in 
the matter they were reading, and did his part with good success 
towards accomplishing this result. He was never petty, but could 
with a look and a word check incipient disorder. While we were 
translating Cicero's Letters, Mr. Gurney would throw in here and 
there some little bit of domestic or social mention about the Ro- 

1 There are, however, very pleasing notices of him in the President's Annual Report. 



Ephraim TVhitman Gurney 4-43 

man to whom the letter was addressed, or who was alluded to, 
which made us feel that, with the freedom of an intimate bachelor- 
friend, he dropped in to supper informally at any Palatine or 
^squiline home he pleased, and knew the way to them now. 

Meet him in the Faculty room (where he sat as chairman of the 
Parietal Committee) when summoned for discipline, or call on 
him in his room on an errand — he was always genial.^ His face 
beamed through his glasses. He actually liked college boys. When 
talked to about some student, he always seemed to have some 
personal notion about each. He knew human nature and believed 
in it. This was the secret of his success with happy-go-lucky boys 
whom he kindly and understandingly admonished. They at once 
respected and liked him. He recognized that they were "in the 
green-apple stage," and allowed for that. 

In President Eliot's expansion of the College to a University, 
Gurney was a counsellor and a helper, and in the first breaking-up 
of the old ice he was made Dean. He had been appointed Assistant 
Professor of Philosophy during the Presidency of Dr. Hill, and 
when Mr. Eliot came to the presidency he had recently been made 
University Professor of History. 

Of Gurney as Dean President Eliot says: "To the discharge of 
his new and delicate functions Professor Gurney brought ready 
tact and insight, unfailing courtesy and common firmness, much 
experience and a quick and sound judgment." There was "unani- 
mous appreciation by the Governing Boards of his success. . . . 
His writing was clear, thoughtful, and cogent; more valuable as 
the work of one, not merely a theorist, but who wrote under re- 
sponsibility, and who was taking daily active part in the mat- 
ters which he discussed. He moulded the office and headed it for 
six years, then resigned to go to Europe with his wife for a stay 
of some duration." 

A writer in the Nation wrote at the time of Gurney's death: 
"When Eliot became President in 1870 he knew his man as the 
one who could not only be a friendly adviser of boys in their 
studies, but also in their sports: he also dealt with the penal side 
of college discipline." This was, of course, the strongest test of his 

^ No photograph that I have seen does any justice to Mr. Gurney's pleasant face. 



444 The Saturday Club 

popularity, but the writer says that "the parents of many a youth 
who . . . found the strait and narrow way of industry and econ- 
omy hard to follow in college life can bear testimony to the con- 
sideration and tenderness and the wisdom with which the stern 
duties of the Dean were discharged. No man whose own career 
had been, as Mr. Gurney's had, one of rigid self-denial and untir- 
ing labour ever had more sympathy for and generosity in dealing 
with the errors and shortcomings of wayward youngsters, or knew 
better how to make words of warning words of hope and encour- 
agement." 

Mr. Gurney married, rather late in life. Miss Ellen Hooper, who, 
some years earlier, I was told, had been In a Latin class which he 
conducted in the Agasslz School. She was the sister of our mem- 
ber Edward W. Hooper. After their simple marriage ceremony, 
probably conducted by James Freeman Clarke at the little chapel 
in Indiana Place in Boston, Mr. Gurney and his wife walked out 
over the bridge to their new Cambridge home on the airy ridge 
near the Reservoir. Mrs. Henry L. Higglnson, who, as Ida Agasslz, 
had been a close friend of Miss Hooper, spoke thus of the Gur- 
neys: "He was wisdom incarnate. He could look all round things. 
His charity enclosed mankind. He was so quiet that he was not 
a marked person in society. With his wife, an equally beautiful 
character, he was always wise and sweet." They were childless. 
She outlived him. Like her husband, she was a devoted and re- 
markable scholar and reader, which gave them much pleasure to- 
gether; but they were unselfish, always friendly and helpful, and 
living simply. They joyfully pursued studies together, and to- 
gether they led a perfectly happy life, though both died untimely. 

Henry Higglnson said of this household, "The Gurneys' house 
became, more than before, a place that young students could go 
to," and quoted a wise teacher, on causes favourable to education, 
to this effect: "If a young man has a friendship with a cultivated 
woman, then his education is on a good road." "To go to that 
home was a liberal culture, not only in *the humanities,' but in 
human relations at their best." 

In i860, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences chose 
Mr. Gurney a member and we are told in his memoir that he 



Ephraim JVhitman Gurney 445 

found his place in the section of Philology and Archaeology, but 
these studies and his classics were for him but steps to History. 
The breadth of Gurney's studies bore fruit in spacious ideas. He 
went on from the classic authors to the study of Roman Law, to 
understand better the history and influence of Rome. He got this 
branch introduced into Harvard. His studies in Philosophy show 
the results of his admirable preparation.^ 

The quality of the Gurneys and the security with which it 
could be counted on, as well as the degree of friendship, appears 
in this anecdote told by President Eliot. A student fell ill; the dis- 
ease proved to be smallpox; he must at once be removed from the 
dormitory. The President at once went to this pair and said, 
"May I send the boy up here, and you come and live with us."* Or 
shall I put him in my house and come up here to you.'*" One of 
these alternatives was immediately arranged between the friends. 

Henry James, Jr., regretfully passing by the names of persons 
remarkable for power, nobility, or charm, whom he knew in Cam- 
bridge, speaks of "Exquisite Mrs. Gurney, of the infallible taste, 
the beautiful hands and the tragic fate; Gurney himself, for so 
long Dean of the Faculty at Harvard and trusted judge of all 
judgments, . . . they would delightfully adorn a page, and ap- 
pease a piety that is still athirst, if I had n't to let them pass. 
Harshly condemned to let them pass, and looking wistfully after 
them as they go, how can I yet not have Inconsequently asked 
them to turn a moment more before disappearing .^"'^ 

I find in Mr. Emerson's journal of 1868, probably written on 
returning from the Club dinner, this comment on members and 
guests: "Gurney seemed to me, in an hour I once spent with him, 
a fit companion. Holmes has some rare qualities. Horatio Green- 
ough shone, but one only listened to him. Henry Hedge, George 
Ward ^ especially, and, if one could ever get over the fences, and 
actually on even terms, Elliot Cabot. There is an advantage of 

* See his letter given by Professor James B. Thayer at the close of the latter's book, 
The Letters of Chauncey Wright, with whom Gurney used to discuss questions. With this 
man, by the testimony of all his friends, of extraordinary attainment, great intellect, and 
lovable qualities, Mr. Gurney was in close friendship during their comparatively short lives. 

* Memories of a Son and Brother. 

' George Cabot Ward, of New York, brother of Samuel Gray Ward. 



44^ "The Saturday Club 

being somewhat in the chair of the company — a little older and 
better-read — if one is aiming at searching thought. And yet, 
how heartily I could sit silent, purely listening, and receptive, 
beside a rich mind!" 

Gurney kept " an open mind daily instructed by men and af- 
fairs." It was remarkable that he was at once a Fellow and a 
Professor, a high and very rare distinction. 

Professor Torrey resigned the chair of McLean Professor of 
History, which he had filled with such fidelity, in 1886, and Mr. 
Gurney was appointed his successor; but it was too late. A wast- 
ing and painful disease had fixed itself upon him and he died 
before the end of the year. 

Speaking of Mr. Gurney's work In the last few years of his life 
Professor Bartlett said, — "It had never been done so well before, 
and it could not be better done." 

In the memories of most of the students for twenty-nine years 
he remained not only as admirable teacher, but as friendly man. 
But he left neither notes nor books. He had filled and delighted 
himself by study, and he had talked to his students and met their 
questions from the fulness of his knowledge, seeming to live in the 
subject of his discourse. A student, whom he had tutored, well 
said of Gurney's warming influence in the chilly atmosphere of 
Faculty relations, "One might feel affection going out of him and 
coming in from him." Some one said of Mr. Gurney that "he 
was never so happy as in the still air of delightful studies." 

This very human philosopher and professor said, "I care much 
more about men than about man." 

E. W. E. 



Chapter XV 
1868 

Res nolunt diu male administrari 

This want of adapted society is mutual. The man of thought, the man of letters, 
the man of science, the administrator skilful in affairs, the man of manners and culture, 
whom you so much wish to find — each of these is wishing to be found. Each wishes 
to open his thought, his knowledge, his social skill to the daylight in your company 
and affection, and to exchange his gifts for yours; and the first hint of a select and 
intelligent company is welcome. 

Emerson 

IN Emerson's journal, the following words, written early in the 
year, show that the Reconstruction strife with the President 
reached even Concord: "What a divine beneficence attaches to 
Andrew Johnson! In six troubles, and in seven, he has been an 
angel to the Republican Party, delivering them out of their dis- 
tresses." This recalls Mr. Pearson's sentence in his Life of Andrew: 
"Congress has set Its trap for the President right in the path where 
his obstinacy and rashness were sure to lead him." The patriots 
of the Club, all anxious to have the Union restored on lines that 
should ensure justice, permanence, and good feeling, were still 
of varying shades of opinion before this most difficult problem. 
The long thunderstorm of war had not yet cleared the sky. 

Mr. Forbes wrote in January to Goldwin Smith in England: 
"Last week our Republican Governor here, the successor of An- 
drew, has dared to nominate to the Chief Justiceship, a pro-slavery 
Democrat who voted against emancipation, and this over Judge 
Hoar, the best judge and the best man in Massachusetts, now that 
we have lost our dear Governor Andrew. We are fighting this 
wretched backsliding. It is done on the miserable trimming pre- 
tence of giving the sham Democracy one judge; it is really a sop 
to the reactionists. ... I fully expect to see Grant elected and 
thus gain four years of honest, firm administration in which to 
tide over the difficulties of reconstructing labour and society at the 



44 8 "The Saturday Club 

South. I pity him his task and his danger of losing his splendid 
present position; but we need the four years for our safety and that 
of the blacks." 

Two months later, having made a tour through several Southern 
States in the interval, and talked temperately and civilly with 
men of different politics and classes, white and black, Mr. Forbes 
wrote to Hon. W. P. Fessenden: "From this intercourse, making 
allowance for the prejudices of each class, I draw one unhesitating 
conclusion, that upon the unity and cohesion of the Republican 
Party, for the coming six months depends the fate of the Union 
men, black and white, and to a great extent the successful restora- 
tion of industry and order for years to come." 

After a real peace should be restored, Mr. Forbes said, how long 
the party lived was very immaterial, "but for many years after 
such restoration the four million blacks will need something in the 
direction of a Freedmen's Bureau, not for charity, but for advice, 
and a sort of guardianship in their new rights and in securing some 
little education." He was anxious that this should not be too much 
of a charity, but should help these people to help themselves. 

At this time, another entry in the journal by Mr. Emerson, 
now an Overseer of Harvard College, shows a symptom of the 
beneficent awakening at Cambridge, soon to come: "In the 
Board of Overseers . . . the Committee on Honorary Degrees 
reported unfavourably on all but the commanding names, and 
instantly the President and an ex-President pressed the action 
of the Corporation, acknowledging that these men proposed for 
honours were not very able or distinguished persons, but it was the 
custom to give these degrees without insisting on eminent merit. 
I remember that Dr. FoUen, in his disgust at the Reverend and 
Honourable Doctors he saw in America, wished to drop the title 
and be called Mister." 

In June, Mr. Adams, who had insisted on resigning his position, 
returned to private life in Quincy after his seven years' stay in 
England. Of the debt his Country owed her retired Minister, 
Lowell, after he had himself been Minister to England, said: 
"None of our generals in the field; not Grant himself, did better or 



i868 449 

more trying service than he in his forlorn outpost of London. 
Cavour did hardly more for Italy." The change must have seemed 
great on other accounts than the leaving public life. As Mr. 
Morse, his biographer, says, a great gulf intervened between the 
United States of 1861 and of 1868. Mr. Adams wished to retire 
to quiet studies in the ancestral house at Quincy, and kept out 
of the political wrangle then going on, which disgusted him. Per- 
haps this attitude was the occasion of his not being immediately 
chosen into the Club, as, had he returned after his victory in the 
Confederate ironclad struggle, he surely must have been. Within 
a few months he was offered the presidency of Harvard Univer- 
sity. He said he saw in himself "no especial fitness" for the office 
and declined. 

Motley also returned in June from England, where he had 
lived for some months after leaving Vienna, and, with his family, 
established himself at No. 2, Park Street. 

The historian of another brave and sturdy Republic lent his 
voice and influence to history-in-the-making at a critical period in 
his own country. The Presidential campaign began, and Motley, 
invited to speak in Boston, strongly urged the Republican issues, 
especially the meeting the public debts in honest money. His 
earnest and brilliant addresses in Boston, "Four Questions for 
the People," and in New York, under the auspices of the Historical 
Society, on "Historic Progress and American Democracy," were 
said to have been delightful and effective. To him Grant seemed 
the man for the hour, and Dr. Holmes said, "There was not a 
listener whose heart did not warm as he heard the glowing words 
in which the speaker recorded the noble achievements of the 
soldier who must in so many ways have reminded him of his 
favourite character, WlUiam the Silent." 

As summer came in, Mr. Longfellow with his daughters, his 
son with his bride, and his brother-in-law, Mr. Tom Appleton, 
left home for a year of Europe. From the record in Mrs. Fields's 
journal, it almost seems as if the Club met for once at a private 
house, for she wrote: — 

"Saturday, May 23rd, 1868. To-night, probably in place of the 
regular Saturday dinner, there was a farewell dinner to Longfellow 



45 o The Saturday Club 

at our house, eleven at table. There should have been twelve if 
Alexander Longfellow had not missed a train. Emerson, Agasslz, 
Holmes, Lowell, Greene,^ Norton, Whipple, Dana, and Long- 
fellow came. There was much pleasant talk, a poem by O. W. H., 
and the farewells. Longfellow inquired after all his old and hum- 
ble friends in England whom he intends seeing, rather than any 
celebrities. Mr. Emerson was full of sweetness and talk. He tries 
to persuade Longfellow to go to Greece to look after the Klephts, 
(supposed) authors of Romaic poetry, which they both believe 
is as original as beautiful.^ 

"Agassiz contested with Emerson about Darwin. Dana talked 
of the sea and of the folly of precaution. It has always been a 
habit of his since the Two Years to carry a compass, a coil of rope, 
a jack-knife, and a flask of tea about with him on his voyages; but 
the only real strait he was ever in at sea found him without them. 
From that time he gave up carrying anything of the kind and 
trusted to the higher powers." 

Holmes's tribute of affection follows : — 

"Our Poet, who has taught the Western breeze 
To waft his songs before him o'er the seas, 
Will find them wheresoe'er his wanderings reach 
Borne on the spreading tide of English speech, 
Twin with the rhythmic waves that kiss the farthest beach. 

** Where shall the singing bird a stranger be 
That finds a nest for him in every tree? 
How shall he travel who can never go 
Where his own voice the echoes do not know. 
Where his own garden flowers no longer learn to grow? 

**Ah! gentlest soul! how gracious, how benign 
Breathes through our troubled life that voice of thine, 
Filled with a sweetness born of happier spheres. 
That wins and warms, that kindles, softens, cheers, 
That calms the wildest woe and stays the bitterest tears! 

** Forgive the simple words that sound like praise; 
The mist before me dims my gilded phrase; 

* Longfellow's friend and constant correspondent, George W. Greene, of Newport. 
^ Several very striking specimens of the Romaic, or Modern Greek, poetry of the 
Klephts were published in the Dial in an article by Margaret Fuller. 



i868 45 1 

Our speech at best Is half alive and cold, 

And, save that tenderer moments make us bold, 

Our whitening lips would close, their truest truth untold. 

"We who behold our autumn sun below 
The Scorpion's sign, against the Archer's bow, 
Know well what parting means of friend from friend; 
After the snows no freshening dews descend. 
And what the frost has marred, the sunshine will not mend. 

"So we all count the months, the weeks, the days, 
That keep thee from us in unwonted ways, 
Grudging to alien hearths our widowed time; 
And one has shaped a breath in artless rhyme 
That sighs, 'We track thee still through each remotest clime.' 

"What wishes, longings, blessings, prayers shall be 
The more than golden freight that floats with thee! 
And know whatever welcome thou shalt find, — 
Thou, who hast won the hearts of half mankind, — 
The proudest, fondest love thou lea vest still behind!" 

It is probably true that no American ever landed in England 
who had won his welcome from so many hearts, from palace to 
thatched cottage or slated tenement. From Windsor Castle he 
received an intimation that the Queen would be sorry to have 
Mr. Longfellow pass through England without her meeting him, 
naming a day for his visit; dinners were given in his honour and 
invitations came from many interesting and distinguished people. 
He wrote to Mr. Fields: "I have so many, many things to tell 
you that there would be no end. . . . Among them is Tennyson's 
reading *Boadicea' to me at midnight. A memorable night." ' 
Soon the poet fled to the Lakes and mountains for respite, but was 
summoned thence for academic laurels. From the Scottish Border, 
*'I swooped down to Cambridge and there had a scarlet gown put 
on me, and the students shouted, 'Three cheers for the red man 
of the West!'" 

A month after Longfellow's sailing, Norton took ship for Eng- 
land with his venerable mother, his two sisters, his wife and little 

* It may amuse the older Harvard Graduates in the Saturday Club to hear Longfellow's 
description of Tennyson in a letter to Lowell: "If two men should try to look alike, they 
could not do it better than Tennyson and Professor Lovering do without trying.''^ 



452 The Saturday Club 

children, thus being foot-free for a long residence abroad, In serious 
yet delightful study of things that most Interested, and the form- 
ing or continuing many friendships. These years were fitting him 
for the work that lay before him on his return (though he as yet 
did not know of It) as a helper and Illuminator of many lives. The 
Nortons lived for some months In a pleasant rectory In Kent. 

The following account of the August meeting of the Club we 
owe to Mrs. Fields's notes of what her husband told her: — 

"August 30th. Saturday Club; a small company of ten, but 
brilliant and social. Emerson, Sumner, Holmes, Hoar, Dana, 
S. G. Howe, Estes Howe, Mr. Fields, etc. Sumner talked more 
than the rest. 'More of the Capitolian Jove than ever,' said Mr. 
Fields, 'but the talk was interesting.' It was amusing to see 
Holmes fly up with his light weapons to attack the conversation, 
only to find himself repulsed by Sumner in his citadel. . . . 

"There was some talk of Motley, who said he could get no one 
In London to print his first history. Therefore, though he could 
ill afford it, he printed a thousand copies at his own expense and 
had them circulated. The book became an enormous success at 
once, and as he had no copyright. It was pirated by five houses 
in London and two In Edinburgh. He was pursued by letters 
from every publisher In London for his second book, and his works 
have been translated into Russian and Chinese, as well as many 
other languages. It has been said into as many as Uncle Tom's 
Cabin. 

"His novels, his first ventures, were printed In Boston by 
Munroe. They had some merit, but the publisher, either through 
idleness or carelessness, did little or nothing about them. A 
gentleman — I think Mr. Phillips of Phillips and Sampson — 
told Mr. Fields that after the failure of his first novels, he went 
to see Mr. Motley one day and found him with large books 
strewn about on the floor. 'What are you going to do now, Mr. 
Motley.?' 'I am hunting up matter for the history of the Dutch 
Republic' The visit over, Mr. Phillips went away, saying to him- 
self, 'Another of Motley's failures. This young man-about-town 
will not do much with those books.' Six months later, he called 



i868 453 

again. 'How does your work come on, Motley?' 'Well'; he replied, 
* and I have just taken passage for Europe to continue it there.' 
He could hardly have been more than thirty years old then, and 
now he Is just fifty-four, and was over forty when the book which 
made his fame at last appeared. Now all the honours which the 
world has to give are heaped upon him. In speaking of Longfel- 
low's luncheon lately with the Queen, Motley said he had gone 
down, when he was a young author, to pass a few days at Bal- 
moral with Lord John Russell. They were in the garden one 
morning, when a message came from Her Majesty, who was then 
at her castle there, saying she wished to see Sir John. Asking 
to be excused, he went Immediately to the Queen, who begged 
him to return to fetch Mr. Motley to see them. The carriage drove 
back. Motley was told to jump In as he was, In his shooting- 
jacket, and they returned together, to pass a most social and 
agreeable morning with the Queen and Prince Albert. . . . 

"At a large dinner, Mr. Fields watched the meeting between 
Mr. Sumner and Mr. Charles Francis Adams, who had formerly 
been great friends, but who differed and separated, after Mr. 
Adams was chosen to go to England, on some question connected 
with our political relations with that country. He saw the blood 
flush over Mr. Adams's face as Sumner addressed him. The Inter- 
view was evidently becoming very painful when Mr. Fields went 
forward and broke It up by addressing Mr. Adams. The latter 
showed his gratitude by turning to him and extending both hands 
in a cordial manner most rare with him at any time. . . . 

"Mr. Fields advanced the subject of copyright, at table, telling 
Mr. Sumner he hoped that question would still be foremost in his 
mind, as he advanced to take his place in the new government. 
'But do you know,' asked Sumner In his most serious way, 'what 
a pecuniary loss it would be to your house to have this measure 
carried.?' 'Yes,' said Mr. Fields, ^ hut fiat justitia, mat Fields, 
Osgood & Co.' Of course a hearty laugh was the immediate 
response." 

During the summer, Lowell was preparing for publication his sec- 
ond volume of poems (if we count out the two series of "Biglow 
Papers") wisely excluding from it humorous poems. "They can 



4-54 "The Saturday Club 

come by and by, if they are wanted. They would jar here," he 
said. He called the book Under the Willows. The burden of the 
North American Review now fell back upon his shoulders, as Nor- 
ton had gone for an indefinite period, and Professor Gurney, his 
deputy, was taken ill. 

Mr. Scudder, in his biography of Lowell, to which I am greatly 
indebted, tells a story showing his generosity, when we consider 
how recent was the war, and the death in battle of so many sons 
of the Lowell race. The letters and journals of a Virginian gentle- 
man who had visited New England in 1834 were shown to him 
with a view to the possibility of their publication. Lowell, having 
read them, said, in a letter to Godkin, editor of the Nation: "I 
confess to a strong sympathy with men who sacrificed everything, 
even to a bad cause, which they could see only the good side of; 
and now the war is over, I see no way to heal the old wounds but 
by frankly admitting this and acting upon it. We can never re- 
construct the South except through its own leading men, nor ever 
hope to have them on our side till we make it for their interest and 
compatible with their honour to be so." These journals, with an 
introduction by Lowell, ran through several numbers of the 
Atlantic in 1870. 

We find in a letter written by Norton this pleasant description 
of a friendly gathering during this autumn: "When I was with 
Ruskin in Paris we had a delightful little partie carree — he and 
Longfellow, and Tom Appleton and I ; they had never met before. 
Ruskin had written me two or three weeks ago of their meeting." 
Longfellow's few words express with exquisite felicity the impres- 
sion that Ruskin would make on one of keen and delicately sym- 
pathetic insight, and express at the same time the prevailing 
temper of his mind. "At Verona," he says, "we passed a delight- 
ful day with Ruskin. I shall never forget a glimpse I had of him 
mounted on a ladder, copying some details of the tomb of Can 
Grande. He was very pleasant in every way, but, I thought, very 
sad: suffering too keenly from what is inevitable and beyond 
remedy, and making himself 

'A second nature, to exist in pain 
As in his own allotted element.'" 



i868 455 

In November, General Grant was elected President of the 
United States. 

It should have been mentioned that, In this and the previous 
year, Mr. Dana served in the Massachusetts Legislature, and 
made there several noted speeches, among others his argument 
on the repeal of the usury laws, a bill for which was unexpectedly 
carried in that body as the result of this speech, which has been 
reprinted for use before the Legislatures of other States. 

No new member was chosen into the Club during this year. 



Chapter XVI 
1869 

How happy is he born and taught 
That serveth not another's will; 
Whose armour is his honest thought. 
And simple truth his utmost skill; 

Who envies none that chance doth raise. 
Or vice; who never understood 
How deepest wounds are given by praise; 
Nor rules of State, but rules of good. 1 

Sir Henry Wotton 

THE New Year came in cheerfully because of the confidence 
of the country at large in the strength, common sense, and 
humanity of their great General. The Club had reason to be 
gratified in his appointments of Motley as Minister to the Court 
of St. James, and Judge Hoar in the Cabinet as Attorney-General. 
As a result, April would find two empty chairs at "Parker's," 
besides those of Longfellow and Norton. The former, after a 
happy residence during the winter on the Lung' Arno in Florence, 
and on the site of Sallust's villa in Rome, moved his family south- 
ward in spring to a villa in beautiful Sorrento. Norton, though he 
had made an excursion with Ruskin into northern France, had been 
mainly in England rejoicing in the meeting of interesting persons, 
Carlyle, the Leweses, John Stuart Mill, Burne-Jones, and William 
Morris. Fields and his wife sailed for Europe in the spring, having 
won the favour from Lowell of taking his only daughter with them 
on their excursion. Lowell thanks Fields "for leaving a most deli- 
cate loophole for my pride in conferring on me a kind of militia 
generalship of the Atlantic Monthly while you were away" and 

offers to make it something real by reading proofs, preventing 

from writing such awful English, and acting at need as consulting 
physician. 

1 The direct and honourable conduct of Motley suggests the motto. 



i869 



457 



The following letters that passed between two members of the 
Club, and bring in two others, should find place In our annals as 
witnessing to the friendships and the patriotism of those concerned. 

Judge Hoar, writing from Washington to Lowell, in March, 
after his call to the Cabinet, as Attorney-General, thanking him 
for his "hurrah" of congratulation, fears that his appointment 
may do more harm than good by blocking the way for good men of 
Massachusetts. " I have already expressed," he says, " the opinion 
that you ought to go as Minister to Spain or Austria (the latter, 
of course, only in case Motley goes to London), and that either 
Boutwell or I, or both of us, if necessary, ought to quit the Cabinet, 
if it stood in the way of such a public benefaction. But I feel very 
much like an intruder, and can only say that, while I am about, 
the President shall have as much honest counsel, given with such 
directness and earnestness as the opportunity may allow, as I am 
able to furnish, and that, whenever my duty in that behalf ceases, 
no one can be more glad of it than myself." 

Lowell wrote in his reply: — • 

"I did not look for any answer to my letter, knowing how over- 
whelmed you must be with business. But I can't help answer- 
ing your letter, knowing that a whiff of Massachusetts must be a 
cordial to you where you are. 

"If you could have heard the talk at Club on Saturday, you 
would have been pleased. Did n't you notice any burning of the 
ears between three and four o'clock on that day.^ Everybody was 
warm about you, and not merely that, but (what I liked better) 
everybody was glad of the gain the Country had made in you. It 
was all very sweet to me, you may be sure, but it would have 
pleased you most (as it did me) to hear Emerson, whose good word 
about a man's character Is like being knighted on the field of battle. 
It is so, at least, to you and me who know him. Generally, you 
know, we are apt to congratulate a man on getting an office, but 
in this case we all wished the office joy of getting the man. In 
short, it was just what you deserved and what an honest man may 
fairly like to hear of. 

"Never dream of quitting your place. A man with the head and 
heart that you have, who knows the good and evil of politics, is 



45 8 "The Saturday Club 

just what the President wants. He has an eye for men and will 
not part with you. You, who might have had any place that 
Massachusetts had to give, either State or National, and who chose 
rather the line of duty than that of ambition, are in your right 
place, whoever else is. We are apt to say that Honour seeks out 
such men, and so she does, but promotion is not so quick-eyed and 
finds them less seldom. 

"I am not speaking out of gratitude, though the tears came into 
my eyes when I read your generous words. I know that some of 
my friends had talked of me for some place abroad, but I thought 
it had blown over long ago. I need not say I should like some small 
place, like Switzerland, which I could afford. Spain, of course, 
would be delicious — but I have no 'claims' and would not stand 
in anybody's way, least of all in Motley's. Your letter startled me. 
I had no notion I had been spoken of anywhere but here, and a 
mission could hardly please me more than your speaking of me so 
warmly, nor indeed would be worth so much." 

Mr. Reverdy Johnson, who had succeeded Mr. Adams in the 
English Mission, had negotiated with Lord Clarendon, British 
Foreign Secretary, in the latter part of the previous year, a treaty 
with regard to the American claims for damages wrought by the 
cruiser Alabama. This treaty, discussed in Congress, had been 
carried over into 1869, when it was rejected by the all but unani- 
mous vote of the Senate. This was because Mr. Sumner, then 
chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, had in a notable 
speech advocated the adding of a new feature, claims for "indi- 
rect damages." Mr. Morse in his Lije of Adams says that the 
latter, on hearing of Sumner's speech, at once said its effect would 
be "to raise the scale of our demands of reparation so very high, 
that there is no chance of negotiation left, unless the English 
have lost all their spirit and character"; and added that Motley, 
before setting forth on his mission, had called on him: "He seems 
anxious to do his best, but his embarrassment is considerable in 
one particular which never affected me, and that is, having two 
masters. Mr. Seward never permitted any interference of the 
Senate or Mr. Sumner with his direction of the policy." 



i869 



459 



Motley was cordially welcomed in England, but this letter, writ- 
ten to Dr. Holmes in April, shows that he foresaw difficulties, as 
he looked around on his new horizon, and they appeared all too 
soon. He wrote : — 

" I feel anything but exultation at present — rather the op- 
posite sensation. I feel that I am placed higher than I deserve, 
and at the same time that I am taking greater responsibilities 
than ever were assumed by me before. You will be indulgent to 
my mistakes and shortcomings — and who can expect to avoid 
them t But the world will be cruel, and the times are threatening. 
I shall do my best — but the best will be poor enough — and keep 
*a heart for any fate.'" 

By midsummer Mr. Motley received from Hamilton Fish, the 
Secretary of State, some criticisms on his official dealings with 
Earl Clarendon, together with approval of his general course. 
Mr. Motley rectified the mistake complained of, and all seemed 
to go well. 

Through the summer came letters from Longfellow in Italy 
telling of her perfume and sweetness, but "a little weary of this 
vita beata by the seaside with nothing to do, — or am I hurried by 
what still remains to be done.'*" 

And again he wrote to a friend: "As a child of my century, I 
infinitely prefer our American prose to this kind of European 
poetry. And as the Roman ritornello sings, — 

Se il Papa mi donasse Campidoglio 

E mi dicesse 'Lascia andar' 'sta figlla,' — 

Quella che amava prima, quella voglio." * 

An English friend forwarded to him this tribute from E. J. 
Reed, C. B., "the Chief Constructor of our Navy, and one of the 
greatest ship-builders the world ever produced, in which he speaks 
most highly of your poem 'The Building of the Ship,' as follows : — 

" * Admiralty, July 20. 
"'I should have been so pleased to meet, and pay my profound 
respects to, the author of the finest poem on ship-building that 

* If the Pope should give me Campidoglio, 
And should say, "Let this damsel depart," — [America,] 
Her whom I first loved, her I desire. 



4^0 The Saturday Club 

ever was or probably ever will be written — a poem which I 
often read with truest pleasure.'" 

On his way through England to take ship for America Long- 
fellow received from Oxford University the degree of D.C.L. 

In August, the Longfellows sailed for home. On the first day 
of September this letter records: *' We reached home to-day at sun- 
set. . . . How strange and how familiar it all seems, and how thank- 
ful I am to have brought my little flock back to the fold. The 
young voices and little feet are musical overhead; and the Year 
of Travels floats away and dissolves like a Fata Morgana. . . . 
The quiet and rest are welcome after the surly sea "; and he forth- 
with pays his taxes, "which gives one a home feeling," 

Appleton returned with the family. Holmes, in a letter to Mot- 
ley, furnishes us with this picture: "Walking on the bridge ... I 
met a barouche with Miss G. and a portly mediaeval gentleman 
at her side. I thought it was a ghost almost, when the barouche 
stopped and out jumped Tom Appleton in the flesh, and plenty 
of it, as aforetime. We embraced — or rather he embraced me and 
I partially spanned his goodly circumference. He has been twice 
here — the last time, he took tea and stayed till near eleven, pour- 
ing out all the time such a torrent of talk, witty, entertaining, 
audacious, ingenious, sometimes extravagant, but fringed always 
with pleasing fancies as deep as the border of a Queen's cashmere, 
that my mind came out of it as my body would out of a Turkish 
bath, every joint snapped and its hard epidermis taken clean off 
in that four hours' immersion. Tom was really wonderful, I think. 
I never heard such a fusillade in my life." 

Emerson sent this greeting to his friend: — 

"My dear Longfellow: First, I rejoice that you are safe at 
home; and, as all mankind know, full of happy experiences, of 
which I wished to gather some scraps at the Club on Saturday. 
To my dismay, at midnight I discovered that I had utterly for- 
gotten the existence of the Club. Yesterday, I met Appleton, 
who ludicrously consoled me by afiirming that yourself and him- 
self had made the same slip. I entreat you not to fail on the thir- 
tieth of October. . . ." 



1869 4^1 

' September 14 was the Hundredth Anniversary of the birth of 
Alexander von Humboldt, and the Boston Society of Natural 
History celebrated the day. Agassiz was the orator. Emerson 
records that his discourse was "strong, nothing to spare, not a 
weak point, no rhetoric, and no falsetto: his personal recollections 
and anecdotes of their intercourse, simple, frank, and tender in the 
tone of voice too, no error of egotism or of self-assertion. . , . He 
is quite as good a man, too, as his hero, and not to be duplicated 
I fear." Dr. Holmes, in a letter, said: "Of course I wrote a poem 
. . . which I read at the soiree afterwards. I thought well of it, as 
I am apt to, and others liked it." 

In this difficult period of Reconstruction, many Senators whom 
the President was anxious not to disaffect were seeking places for 
friends of doubtful politics or character, both from him and Judge 
Hoar. The Judge looked only to loyalty and fitness, and this atti- 
tude was not always pleasing to those who urged him to oblige 
them, and his answers never sacrificed clearness for the sake of 
seeming agreeable. The pressure on the President to get rid of 
this obstructive and formidable conscience in his Cabinet was very 
great. Grant saw one way open of conciliating the Senate and yet 
showing appreciation of Judge Hoar, for whose wisdom and in- 
tegrity he had great respect and whom he personally liked well. 
He nominated him for the Supreme Court, an eminently fitting 
honour, and this might open a place In his Cabinet for another. 
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., wrote to the Judge, saying, "A great 
mission has been forced upon you, nothing less than to return the 
Senate of the United States to its proper function." 

Mr. Adams In his tribute to the Judge's memory In 1905 said: — 
"One winter afternoon, years ago, I remember we got jesting 
with him over the table of the Saturday Club upon his supposed 
roughness of manner and sharpness of tongue, while he himself 
entered into the spirit of our badinage most keenly of all ; and then, 
without the slightest Indication of feeling or Irritation, but with 
strong humour, he repeated the remark of Senator Cameron of 
Pennsylvania, . . . explanatory of that Senate rejection, 'What 
could you expect for a man who had snubbed seventy Senators!' 



4^2 The Saturday Club 

— seventy then being the full Chamber. That way of putting 
it undoubtedly had a basis, and no little basis, of truth. Judge 
Hoar at the time — and, be it also remembered, it was the time 
of the so-called Reconstruction of the subdued South — Judge 
Hoar was then, I say, head of the Department of Justice. As 
such, he had a large patronage to distribute, and was brought in 
close contact with many eager applicants and their senatorial 
patrons. His sense of humour on such occasions did not always 
have time to come to his rescue, and it was commonly alleged of 
him that in political parlance, *he could not see things'; the real 
fact being that with his rugged honesty and keen eye for pretence 
and jobbery he saw things only too clearly. And so, first and last, 
he 'snubbed seventy Senators,' . . . and they, after their kind, in 
due time, 'got even with him,' as some among them doubtless 
expressed it. 

"Then it was, under this undeserved stigma, twice repeated — 
first in the State House at Boston,^ next in the Capitol at Washing- 
ton — then it was that the metal of the man's nature returned its 
true ring. He wore defeat as 't were a laurel crown." 

The Senate by a very large vote refused to confirm the nomi- 
nation. So Judge Hoar remained in the Cabinet on good terms 
with the President whose dilemma remained unsolved for some 
months. 

In writing to Mr. Norton, Lowell speaks of the time in spring 
"when I thought it possible I might be sent abroad [on a mis- 
sion]. ... It fell through, and I am glad it did, for I should not 
have written my new poem." This was "The Cathedral," at first 
called "A Day in Chartres." It was dedicated to Fields. Lowell 
was happy in it, and its reception. He said, "There seems to be 
a bit of clean carving here and there, a solid buttress or two, and 
perhaps a gleam through painted glass." 

Christmas, that year, came on the last Saturday of the month. 
Writing to Dana from Washington the Judge said: "The Satur- 
day Club, which should meet to-day, I am informed is disposed 

^ He had, some time before, been nominated for a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme 
Court, but failed of the appointment because of the opposition of persons who bore a 
grudge because of the sharpness of his speech on occasion. 



i869 463 

gracefully to give way to Christmas as the older institution, and 
will dine at Parker*s on Monday." 

A matter, in which three members of our Club were directly 
active, and which was important to scholars, especially Harvard 
men, came to a head this year, namely, Carlyle's munificent gift 
to the University. His hostility, coarsely expressed, towards the 
Northern States during the war had led Emerson, after strong 
protest, to cease writing to him. 

Carlyle had taken kindly to Mr. Norton, then in London, and 
had by him and others been enlightened on the great issue. In a 
letter, Norton told how Carlyle one day said to him: "In writing 
about Cromwell and Friedrich I have chanced to get together some 
things not wholly worthless, nor yet easy to find, and, I 've thought 
I should like, when I die, to leave these books to some institution 
in New England where they might be preserved, and where they 
would serve as a testimony of my appreciation o' the goodness 
o' your people towards me, and o' the many acts o' kindness they 
have done me; and perhaps you can help me to have this rightly 
done." 

Hearing this good decision Mr. Emerson wrote to Norton: 
"I see no bar to the design, which is lovely and redeeming in 
Carlyle, and will make us all affectionate again. Your own letter 
to him I found perfect in its instructions, in its feeling and tone. 
I am looking for a final letter from him . . . and shall then carry 
my report to President Eliot." 

In the running history of the activities of the members of the 
Club in their various helpful or illuminating courses, hardly any 
mention has been made of Dr. Hedge, metaphysician, scholar, and 
highly valued preacher in the Unitarian Church in Brookline. 
In December of this year he sent to Dr. Holmes his newly pub- 
lished Reason in Religion. 

Dr. Hedge, regarding lovingly the Old Testament, wrote to this 
student of advancing science that he need not read the book. His 
friend replies: "I have read it, every word of it. ... I have had 
too much pleasure in reading it to be denied the privilege of telling 
you how I have enjoyed it. I am struck with the union of free 
thought with reverential feeling. It is strange how we read these 



4^4 T'he Saturday Club 

stories like children until some wiser teacher shows us the full- 
grown meaning they hide under their beautiful simple forms.'* 

Dr. Holmes then speaks of the poetical style of this book, and 
calls attention to the unconscious rhythm that crops out every- 
where through prose discourses: — 

"Here are some of the verses: — 
^ 'As slow as that which shaped the solid earth by long accretion 
from the fiery deep.' 

'A veritable piece of history, embracing centuries in its term 
and scope, that wondrous tower of Babel is a fact.' 

"Pray tell me if you knew you were writing verse, or were you 
in the case of M. Jourdin?" ^ 

Longfellow, sending wishes for a Merry Christmas to the 
house of Fields, exclaims: "What dusky splendours of song are 
in King Alfred's new volume! . . . His 'Holy GraiF and Lowell's 
'Cathedral' . . . with such good works you can go forward to meet 
the New Year with conscience void of reproach." 

Fields was just withdrawing from the publishing house, to give 

himself to literature and lectures. 

* In this year a second artist was added to the membership of the 

Club, eager and charming in his painting and his conversation, 

William Morris Hunt. 

1 Was it he that only learned in adult life that he had been talking prose unconsciously 
through all the years? 



WILLIAM MORRIS HUNT 

After AUston's death the interest in art which his noble personal- 
ity and work had begun to awaken in Puritan and commercial 
Boston languished, although the more frequent visits to Europe 
of such men as Ward and Appleton, Brimmer and Norton kept the 
spark alive. Rowse had been brought into the Club rather as a 
friend than artist. William Hunt came back from France the year 
of its founding, and, though he lived at first in Newport, the heat 
of his enthusiasm began to be felt in Boston. Yet not until 1869 
was his brilliant presence added to the membership. He was then 
forty-nine years old and at the height of his powers. 

Born in Brattleboro, and his father dying when his children 
were all very young, their mother, a superior woman, whose yearn- 
ings for art as a girl had been frowned on, determined to give her 
five children every opportunity. She moved to New Haven, found 
an Italian artist, and she and all of them took lessons of him. Rich- 
ard, the second son, became a distinguished architect. William 
at sixteen entered Harvard, was a bright scholar, but the artistic 
temperament compelled him to music, drawing, and to the woods 
and meadows. So, as "too fond of amusement," he was rusticated 
to Stockbridge — no hardship for him. Some one there, perhaps 
the clergyman who had him in charge, saw in him "A soul let 
loose, an inspiration to all who met him." 

Troubled by William's persistent cough, Mrs. Hunt determined 
that he should not return to college then, and with all her children 
valiantly sailed for Italy. This changed the course of William's 
life. It had been planned that, after a year, he should go back, 
finish his course at Harvard, and then study to be a surgeon. 
Rome decreed that he should be an artist; his passion for art led 
his mother to stay abroad with her family. He wished to be a 
sculptor, and began modelling in the studio of H. K. Brown. 

Copying the work of the past in Rome did not appeal to Wil- 
liam, but he found delight in Paris where he worked under Barye, 
meaning to become a sculptor. Then, following the custom of the 



4^6 "The Saturday Club 

times, he went to Diisseldorf and began the usual drill there. 
He hated it and went away. On his return to Paris he saw in a 
window the "Falconer," by Couture. Stirred by this, he entered 
Couture's studio. The master looked over his work from the life 
model before him and said, "But you do not know how to draw," 
and introduced him to values, the foundation of good work.^ 
This, and the confirming his instinct that the artist must paint 
for joy, were what he learned from Couture. He soon found that 
he had all that this master could give him. 

He then began studying the work of the great Venetians and 
Flemings, but one day saw Millet's "Sower," great, but unap- 
preciated, in exhibition, and recognized a prophet and more than 
a prophet. The eager youth went to Barbizon. There he found 
this noble peasant painting in a cellar the life of the toiling human 
beings about him. On the easel was the "Sheep Shearers." Hunt 
reverenced him from that moment. More than that, this joyous 
youth made Millet his friend. He soon moved to Barbizon and was 
in close relation with him for two years, a disciple, not an imitator. 
Hunt did great service to Millet who more than repaid it by the lift 
he gave to him by his high tone, his breadth, his seriousness; more 
than all, under his influence Hunt's boyish generosity became hu- 
man sympathy. Hunt sold the "Sheep Shearers" for Millet to 
Mr. Brimmer, and when he gave him the money, the great painter 
said he had never before had a hundred dollars in his hand. Thus, 
and by all the purchases he could afford, the young American lifted 
the master out of debt and, more than that, gave vogue to his 
pictures. 

In the Fontainebleau region Hunt met the group of painters then 
making fame for " the Barbizon School " against the tide. It is said 
that Diaz told an American that Hunt was the most brilliant man 
he had ever known. Hunt kept and rejoiced in a beautiful pair of 
horses and drawn swiftly by them saw the region around Paris. 
Full of youthful vitality, and enjoyment of nature and of people, 
it was well that he found in Millet a chastening influence. Millet 

* In his admirable Methode et Entretien d* Atelier, Couture tells the story of his opening 
the eyes of a confident student of Dusseldorf academic training to values, in an inter- 
esting way. It was probably Hunt. 



JVilliam Morris Hunt 467 

took interest in his pictures, and, struck with his facility, said, 
"Hunt, you ought to work!" Yet he was by no means idle and 
many admirable works were done in France, like the "Prodigal 
Son," the queenly portrait of his mother, the "Fortune-Teller," 
the first "Marguerite." Napoleon III twice tried to buy the 
last-mentioned work in vain, as it was promised to an American. 
Long retaining his interest in sculpture, Hunt kept up relations 
with Barye, believing him and Millet the greatest artists of their 
time. 

In 1855, Mr. Hunt, returning to this country, was married, and 
made his pleasant year-round house in Newport among agreeable 
neighbours, especially Henry James, Sr., and his young family. 
As a school-boy visiting in that wonderful home, I had the privi- 
lege of going to Hunt's studio where William and La Farge were 
the eleves. While I was there Hunt came in and cordially asked 
me, boy as I was, to his studio upstairs. There he showed me, to 
my great delight, the first studies for his wonderful " Anahita," or 
"Flight of Night," which years later adorned the Capitol at 
Albany. He also showed me the charming lithographs from his 
paintings, such as the "Hurdy-Gurdy Boy" and the "Girl at the 
Fountain." He gave me copies of these and more. Hunt, in his 
charming way, seemed to know no age in persons who were inter- 
ested in beautiful things. This was about 1859. That same year, 
at the request of the Essex Bar, he painted the remarkable portrait 
of Chief Justice Shaw, now in the Salem Court-House. 

He soon established himself in Roxbury. Later, he had a 
studio in Summer Street where he introduced Bostonians to the 
canvases of Millet, Diaz, Rousseau, Gericault, and Corot, new to 
most of them; yet the artist's masculine enthusiasm and hospi- 
table charm were the principal attraction. 

His characteristic generosity appeared in his calling on the young 
men returning from study abroad, and he almost always bought a 
picture to help bring them into notice. Seeing some of the work 
of Vedder, a stranger to him, he wrote to urge him to exhibit in 
Boston, and many of the pictures were at once sold. 

Stirred by an attack In the Advertiser from some authority at 
Harvard, on the modern French painters, Hunt replied in a with- 



4^8 The Saturday Club 

ering article: "The standard of art education is indeed carried to 
a dizzy height in Harvard University when such men as Millet 
are ranked as triflers. . . . Which one of the painters named above 
was not more familiar with Veronese's best work than are our 
children with the Catechism? They were not only familiar with all 
that is evident^ but devoted students of the qualities in Veronese, 
of which few besides themselves know. It is not worth while to 
be alarmed about the influence of French art. It would hardly be 
mortifying if a Millet or a Delacroix should be developed in Bos- 
ton. It is not our fault that we inherit ignorance in art; but we 
are not obliged to advertise it." 

The first year of the war brought out Hunt's inspiring "Drum- 
mer Boy" beating "To Arms!" and the magnificent "Bugle Call." 
The power and beauty of his portraits began to be appreciated in 
Boston. Sometimes he was not successful because he required that 
the sitter should lend himself freely to the work. Thus, a portrait 
of Dr. Holmes was prosperously begun, but the Doctor unhappily 
took out his watch, having an engagement in Cambridge, and 
asked, "How long must I sit.''" Hunt, somewhat disturbed, yet 
set to work, and all was going well when the watch and the uneasy 
expression reappeared. These conditions soon wrecked the adven- 
ture. Emerson disliked even to sit for a photograph; said he 
"was not a subject for art"; but Mrs. John M. Forbes wished 
much that Hunt should paint him. He was eager to do it, and 
began in good hope. But, though Emerson liked him, the sittings 
dismayed him, and when, on leaving, he asked, "Must I come 
again.?" Hunt told him No, it was of no use. Hunt used to say, 
"No persuaded sitters for me: I never could paint a cat if the cat 
had any scruples, religious, superstitious, or otherwise about sit- 
ting." Emerson's unfinished portrait perished in the Boston Fire. 

At the desire of a committee appointed to have a portrait of 
Sumner painted, as a gift to Carl Schurz, Hunt somewhat un- 
willingly consented to undertake it, for he found himself repelled 
by the Senator's personality. Probably he had only met him at 
the Club, where Sumner's magisterial bearing, lack of flexibility 
and of humour were sometimes annoying. The committee did not 
like the portrait. Hunt painted what he found in Sumner's face 



I 
I 



William Morris Hunt 469 

and bearing, his confident and almost scornfully militant side. 
The picture won much praise in England. 

Hunt's brilliant yet human presence, his original force and 
great generosity leavened the inert lump of art opinion in Boston. 
He awakened the interest and desire of the young people, and con- 
sented to take charge of a class of forty young women. His in- 
struction to his pupils was original, exciting; if necessary, wisely 
contradictory, to suit the individual temperament. More than all, 
he inspired them with love of art and made it seem possible to 
them. He was not one of those instructors who simply pass by the 
pupil and, when asked for a criticism, coldly say, "I see nothing 
there to criticise," utterly discouraging. Hunt could not but in- 
spire by his wit and his faith. Fortunately one of his pupils, as he 
passed from easel to easel, jotted down his quick criticisms and 
remarks on the corner of her drawing-paper. Later, when Hunt 
became more busy, he deputed the business management of the 
class to this young lady. Mr. Lowes Dickinson, the English 
portrait painter, impressed by Hunt's Chief Justice Shaw, visited 
the class. After Hunt had taken leave, this lady, Miss Helen 
Knowlton, showed him her notes of the master's varied instruction. 
Mr. Dickinson was so struck with their value that he urged the 
printing of these Talks on Art, to which Hunt at last consented 
after pruning them severely.^ 

Hunt's disappointing lack of interest in the School of Drawing 
and Painting in the new Museum of Fine Arts was due to disbe- 
lief in the South Kensington ideas that at first prevailed. His own 
Diisseldorf experience, also the influence of Couture — who, like 
himself, had been paralyzed by academic work — made him 
dread the usual routine of school instruction, endless crayon 
stump work from cast and model. He wished rather for the 
Museum School a great working atelier where many live painters 
should give each one day a week. Thus he hoped for freshness and 
individuality and the personal magnetism of one or another to 
stir the individual pupil. When asked what should be the limit 

1 We owe also to Miss Helen Knowlton her admirable Art Life of William Morris Hunt, 
from which the writer has gratefully quoted much, with the consent of Messrs. Little, 
Brown and Company. 



47 o The Saturday Club 

of age for study in the Art Museum, he replied: "From the age 
when Beethoven began to play the piano — four years — to the 
age when Titian painted one of his greatest pictures — ninety 
years." 

One of Hunt's sayings was, "Queer old thing painting is; but 
we would rather die doing it than live doing anything else." He 
defined painting as, "Having something to say, and not saying it 
in words." 

Catholic in his receptivity, he recognized the quality In Japa- 
nese art. Mr. Norton sitting beside Hunt at a Club dinner, told 
him of a beautiful little Japanese vase or cup which he had just 
come by, and said, "Would you like to see it.'*" taking it from his 
pocket and handing It to him. Hunt exclaimed, "Like to see It.'' 
By God, It's one of those damned ultimate things!" 

The Great Fire in Boston in 1872 swept Summer Street and 
with it Hunt's studio and all Its contents, many notable portraits 
in all stages of work, and also his own valuable collection of the 
paintings of the French masters whom he held In honour. 

After this time Hunt turned more to landscape painting than he 
had hitherto. As he advanced in it, his pleasure seems to speak 
from his canvas. Mr. Forbes valued Hunt highly and he took 
him with him as his guest, in 1874, to Florida, where he went for 
rest when overworked — rest, however, of an active-out-of-door 
kind; first for shooting and fishing along the coast, then to his 
family cottage at Magnolia Springs. Here Hunt delighted In the 
wide gleaming St. John's River, seen through the steely glitter 
of the great magnolias, and to sketch, on the strange lonely creeks, 
their live-oaks and cypresses hung by the half-mourning moss 
swaying slowly in the breeze. In the years immediately following 
he painted the upper Charles, then the Artichoke River at Cur- 
zon's Mills, with constantly increasing light and colour. In some 
of these pictures one sees the effect of the teacupful of opals which 
he bought in Mexico as a lift. 

In the spring of 1878, Hunt went to Niagara for rest, but, stirred 
by the wild rush of the rapids, the wonderful colour and the maj- 
esty of the Falls, sent for paint and canvas and worked with great 
results. I cannot, while telling of the Niagara vacations, omit a 



JVilliam Morris Hunt M i 

story of Miss Knowlton's which shows Hunt's tenderness. Re- 
turning to their hotel, his sister told him that, while buying some 
bead-work in a small shop, she had been distressed by hearing a 
sick child cry in the back room. She was sure that it must be 
suffering greatly. Its screams still pierced her ears. 

"I believe," said her brother, "that I can cure that child; and 
what is more, I am going to do it." He arose from his chair, called 
for his overshoes; it was half-past nine o'clock in the evening, 
dark and raining; but he would go. He learned where the shop 
was, and set forth hastily. At one o'clock in the morning he re- 
turned, wet, but very happy. 

"How's your child.'*" his sister asked. 

"She's all right. I left her sleeping. I tell you, that kind of 
work pays." 

But midsummer of that year brought to Hunt a call, unexpected, 
unhoped-for, to do a great public work, in the toil and the joy of 
which his life culminated. The work was noble and worthy; it 
stirred and inspired him — happily not foreseeing the sad end. 
He was commissioned to adorn with great mural paintings the 
Assembly Hall of the New Capitol at Albany. 

On a scaffold forty feet above the floor. Hunt painted, directly 
on stone, the many colossal figures of his two symbolic designs, 
"The Discoverer" and "The Flight of Night." With but one 
assistant he did this great work in two months. 

Hunt felt freedom and advance in this new work. "Think of It, 
you never hear of Boston a hundred miles away! I am out of the 
world, and I want to stay out." But with this enthusiasm in a 
great work went pleasure in, and reverence for, the workmen; he 
painting, they building, six hundred men together, each respect- 
ing and enjoying the other's work. They said that while they were 
proud to be working on such a building, they were prouder still 
to see his work going on. "I tell you," said Hunt, "that I never 
felt so big In my life as I did when they asked me if they could come 
again and see my picture." He planned, in other paintings there 
(vetoed later by the Governor), to introduce their figures. 

Before beginning the work. Hunt had faithfully tried, as far as 
the time allowed, in the summer, the effects of moisture and of 



472 "The Saturday Club 

cold on paint on stone, and believed it would last. But unhappily 
politics had crept into the contracting, a leaking roof resulted, 
and within ten years the paintings were utterly ruined. But the 
artist was spared this blow. Inevitable reaction had followed the 
supreme mental and physical expenditure; personal sorrows were 
added. In the summer of 1879, weak and depressed, he sought 
refreshment with friends at Appledore Island. There, whether by 
accident or sudden impulse, he was drowned in an inland pool in 
the early autumn. 

Mr. Hunt was a most striking personality, tall and spare, with 
brilliant eyes and an aquiline nose; nearly bald, but with a fore- 
lock like Time in the Primer, a moustache and long gray beard. 
He was quick and alert, most cheery and responsive; a wonder- 
ful raconteur and even mimic, everything became dramatic in 
his handling. 

A lady, a guest with him at the enchanting Isle of Naushon, 
riding in a party with Mr. Forbes on the "Desert," describes 
Hunt's sudden appearance on a fine Kentucky horse, riding up 
gallantly, his beard blown backward on both shoulders, the sun- 
set gleaming like garnet in his eyes, and the Mephistophelean effect 
heightened by a turkey feather springing from each side of his soft 
hat. Yet in his studio in serious mood, with his round cap and 
velvet coat, he was singularly suggestive of Titian's portrait of 
himself. In Hunt's early days an elderly stranger in France came 
up and said, "Sir, you so much resemble a great Frenchman whom 
I knew that it seems as If he must have returned to earth." "That 
is indeed strange," was the reply; "to whom do you refer.'*" "To 
G^ricault." 

In sympathy and respect Hunt knew no social class. He hon- 
oured the labourer; helped, in the city street, on the instant, the 
poor woman with her ash-barrel, or, in a humble house, a stranger 
mother to relieve the pain of her sick child. 

From Hunt's work beauty in its full sense speaks, contrasted 
with that of many men eminent for technique or "strength." In 
his is nothing coarse, sensational, ignoble, ugly. He heeded the 
words of his old master. Couture, ''Avant tout,fuyez le laid!^^ In 
his work is always feeling and humanity. Mrs. Whitman, per- 



i 



JVilliam Morris Hunt 473 

haps his best pupil, said, "Even what is called the moral passion 
has a place in his art." 

After his death these maxims of Hunt were found in his pocket- 
book: "To be strong, get self-control; to be strong, live for others; 
no one ever injures us, we injure ourselves." 

Once, when asked to write in a painter's album, this was his 
contribution: — 

"Go East, young man! Meeting, greet the sun, our master- 
painter . . . tell him that the light which he gives the full-grown 
past is far too strong for us. Like young cats, we are blinded by 
the light, and still we pray for light. . . . 

"Tell him his light is strong, and warm, and healthful; still 
we are weak, and cold, and sorry. Would he just deal out such 
pap as that with which he fed the Venetians and Greeks. Or even 
the darkness in which the Egyptians and the Children of the 
Sun wrought such wonders. Then we might do better. Our souls, 
not our eyes, require the light. Strengthen the perceptions, not 
the sight." 

E. W. E. 



Chapter XVII 
1870 

Say, what is honour? — 'T is the finest sense 
Of justice that the human mind can frame. 
Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim. 
And guard the way of life from all oiFence 
Suffered or done. I 

Wordsworth | 

In these brave ranks I only see the gaps. 

Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps, | 

Dark to the triumph which they died to gain. 

Say not so! ] 

*T is not the grapes of Canaan that repay, ' 

But the high faith that failed not by the way. 

Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! 
For never shall their aureoled presence lack: 
I see them muster in a gleaming row. 
With ever-youthful brows that nobler show; 
We find in our dull road their shining track, 

i 

Beautiful evermore, and with the rays j 

Of morn on their white shields of Expectation ! j 

Lowell, Commemoration Ode 

THREE books had been launched on such voyage of life \ 

as each might make just as the New Year was coming in ; three 
volumes of Sumner's addresses, or speeches in Congress, Lowell's J|| 

Among my Books (first series), and Emerson's Society and Solitude. " 

Longfellow acknowledging Sumner's gift wrote: "Each title a 
round in the ladder by which you mounted and reaching from 
1845 to 1855. What a noble decade, and what a noble record! I 
say 'the rounds of a ladder'; let me rather say steps hewn in the 
rock, one after the other, as you toiled upward." 

In February, Lowell went to Washington with his wife to visit 
Judge and Mrs. Hoar. After his return the Judge wrote: "Your 
coming did me a great deal of good, and our friend Ulysses (or 



I 



i870 



475 



'Ulyss,' as Mrs. G. calls him sometimes) had a revelation, the 
day after you left. He went to an evening party where, among 
the entertainments provided, was reading by an adept in that act. 
The reader had, as one of his selections, one of the later ' Biglow 
Papers'; and, as I understand, read it very well. The President 
spoke to me about it the next day — said that he had never read 
or heard one of them before, but that it was the most perfect state- 
ment of the whole doctrine of reconstruction that he had ever met 
with. He seemed much impressed, and the next night . . . pro- 
cured the reader to attend at the State dinner at the White House 
and read it there." 

Fechter had come to America during this winter with his novel 
and very Teutonic rendering of Hamlet^ well matched by his large 
and rather heavy appearance and blond complexion and hair. 
The actor and the man were well received in Boston, also in Cam- 
bridge. Longfellow dined with him at Lowell's and on that evening 
sent the following invitation across the way to Lowell: — 

"N'oubliez vous demain 
A une heure et demie, 

Je vous en prie; 
Huitres et vin du Rhin, 
Salade de homard, 
Volnay et venaison, 

Don, Don, 
N'arrivez vous trop tard!" 

So the next day Fechter lunched at Longfellow's with Lowell and 
Henry James, Sr. 

Of the February meeting, Mr. Emerson noted: "At the Club 
yesterday, Lowell, Longfellow, Cabot, Brimmer, Appleton, Hunt, 
James, Forbes, Fields. Erastus Bigelow ^ was a guest." He goes 
on to say: "How dangerous is criticism. My brilliant friend can- 
not see any healthy power in Thoreau's thoughts. At first I sus- 
pect, of course, that he oversees me, who admire Thoreau's power. 
But when I meet again the fine perceptions in Thoreau's papers, 
I see that there is a defect In his critic that he should undervalue 
them." 

There can be little question that Lowell was the brilliant friend. 
^ The inventor and improver of various looms, and writer on the Tariff. 



47 6 T'he Saturday Club 

He and Thoreau were hopelessly antipodal, though both earnest 
and manly. It was a case of contrast of gentleman and man (both 
words used in the more common, yet favourable sense), society 
and solitude, usage and independence, suburbs and full country. 
The criticisms of Thoreau found often in Emerson's journal, and 
even in his address at his funeral, were written before he had read 
anything of Thoreau but the earlier books, in which his attitude 
was often critical of the private and public life of the day, and 
contentious. When, after his friend's death, his journals were put 
into Mr. Emerson's hands with their rare observations and spirit- 
ual illuminations from them, he no longer lamented the brave 
and true life as wasted. 

Dr. Holmes, writing to Motley, in April, of the " aesthetic 
endemic" then raging in Boston of which Fechter was the ma- 
crobe, says: "Another sensation ... is our new Harvard College 
President. King Log has made room for King Stork. Mr. Eliot 
makes the Corporation meet twice a month. . . . He shows an 
extraordinary knowledge of all that relates to every department 
of the University, and presides with an aplomb^ a quiet, imperturb- 
able, serious good-humour that it is impossible not to admire. ..." 
The Doctor then expresses some sympathy with the quoting by 
some of the Fellows of "that valuable precept, festina lente," but 
speaks of his being "amused, because I do not really care much 
about most of the changes which he proposes. 

"'How is it.'' I should like to ask,' said one of our number, the 
other evening, 'that this Faculty [of Medicine] has gone on for 
eighty years managing its own affairs, and doing it well . . . and 
now within three or four months it is proposed to change all our 
modes of carrying on the school — it seems very extraordinary, 
and I should like to know how it happens.' 

"'I can answer Dr. 's question very easily,' said the bland, 

grave young man, 'there is a new President.' The tranquil assur- 
ance of this answer had an effect such as I hardly ever knew pro- 
duced by the most eloquent sentences I ever heard. ... I have 
great hopes from his energy and devotion to his business, which he 
studies as I suppose no President ever did before. . . ." ^ 

^ Up to this time, the requirements for taking the Harvard Medical degree were that 



i8jo 



477 



The Doctor continues : — 

"I went to the Club last Saturday, and met some of the friends 
you always like to hear of. I sat by Emerson, who always charms 
me with his delicious voice, his fine sense and wit and the delicate 
way he steps about among the words of his vocabulary — if you 
have ever seen a cat picking her footsteps in wet weather, you 
have seen the picture of Emerson's exquisite intelligence, feeling 
for his phrase or epithet . . . and at last seizing his noun or adjec- 
tive — the best, the only one which would serve the need of his 
thought. 

"Longfellow was there. . . . He feels the tameness and want of 
interest in the life he is leading after the excitement of his Euro- 
pean experience, and makes no secret of it. . . . He is restless now 
for want of a task. I hope he will find some pleasant literary labour 
for his later years — for his graceful and lovely nature can hardly 
find expression in any form without giving pleasure to others, and 
for him to be idle is, I fear, to be the prey of sad memories. 

"Agassiz, you know, has been in a condition to cause very grave 
fears. I am happy to say that he is much improved of late." 

Ever since the late autumn the vigorous, hearty, wholesome 
Agassiz had been suffering from some obscure ailment which, 
though at times improving, recurred all through the year, sometimes 
in a threatening manner interfering with his work and alarming 
friends. He was able to go to the White Mountains in later 
summer and seemed better there. 

Among the new departures at Harvard was a scheme, soon 
abandoned, of having lectures to advanced students given there 
by persons not members of the Faculties. Mr. Emerson was sur- 
prised and pleased by an invitation to give a course on Philosophy. 
As Mr. Cabot says in his Memoir: "No one would expect from 
Emerson a system. . . . But he had long cherished the thought of 
a more fruitful method for the study of the mind, founded on the 

the student should have attended two full courses of lectures In the Medical School, and 
should have studied three years (one of these was often under the guidance and teaching 
of some approved doctor), and should have dissected each portion of the human body 
twice, and finally passed oral examinations on the majority of the nine subjects required 
reasonably well. Microscopy (hence histology) was in its infancy. Among the eager abet- 
tors of the reform may be mentioned Drs. Ellis, White, Cheever, Fitz, Wood, and H. P. 
Bowditch. 



47 8 The Saturday Club 

parallelism of the mental laws with the laws of external nature, 
and proceeding by simple observation of the metaphysical facts 
and their analogy with the physical, in place of the method of 
introspection and analysis." For thirty years Mr. Emerson had 
been making such observations and had introduced them in his 
lectures. Now he hoped to gather these and complete his state- 
ment of the Natural History of Intellect. He modestly stated his 
purpose thus: "I might suggest that he who contents himself with 
dotting only a fragmentary curve, recording only what facts he has 
observed, without attempting to arrange them within one outline, 
follows a system also, a system as grand as any other, though he 
does not interfere with its vast curves by prematurely forcing them 
into a circle or ellipse, but only draws that arc which he clearly 
sees, and waits for new opportunity, well assured that these ob- 
served arcs consist with each other. . . . My belief in a course on 
Philosophy is that the student shall learn to appreciate the mir- 
acle of mind; shall see in it the source of all traditions, and shall 
see each of them as better or worse statement of its revelations." 
Mr. Emerson worked with great diligence at the preparation of 
these lectures, but arrangement of his Sibylline leaves was, through 
life, his difficulty. It must be remembered that it was now five 
years at least since he had written "Terminus." There was an 
audience of thirty or more students and some outsiders; and the 
lectures were well received, but he was not quite happy about it. 
He was asked to give another course the following year. 

During the session of Congress the pressure of dissatisfied poli- 
ticians Increased until the President could withstand it no longer. 
One day in June, Judge Hoar who had, months before, told Presi- 
dent Grant that he was ready to withdraw from the Cabinet at 
any time that it was deemed desirable for the public service that 
he should do so, but had received no hint that such a course was 
desired, received a curt letter from the President asking him to 
resign his office of Attorney-General. The Judge instantly com- 
plied, but the manner of the President's action, sudden and with- 
out explanation, surprised and pained him. They had seemed to 
be in most friendly relation. Of course this removal of a man so 
just, wise, and brave from the counsellors of the President, and 



i870 



479 



the manner of it, caused surprise and indignation in Massachu- 
setts.^ 

But the Presidential axe was soon to fall on the neck of another 
of our brilliant and honoured members. Motley, in England, re- 
spected and valued, and, after the matters criticised by Secretary 
Fish in the previous year had been explained and that slight flurry 
had apparently blown over, supposing that he was in satisfactory 
relations with his Country, received from that official, in July, 
a letter requesting him to resign. Dr. Holmes, in his memoir of 
this perhaps his nearest friend, devotes a long chapter to his de- 
fence. Grant had given Motley this mission at Sumner's request. 
Later, when the President was pressing the San Domingo Treaty 
which he had much at heart, Sumner vigorously opposed the treaty, 
which was defeated in the Senate on the last day of June. The 
next day Motley's resignation was requested. Grant was known 
to have been very angry with Sumner, and apparently considered 
that Motley was guiding his course in England under Sumner's 
advice, in a way that would irritate England when the Alabama 
claims, still pending, were considered. ; 

Rightly or wrongly, the belief of Motley's friends was, as Dr. 
Holmes puts it, "that the shaft which struck to the heart of 
the sensitive envoy glanced from the ces triplex of the obdurate 
Senator." 

The Club addressed President Grant on Motley's behalf, as here 
related by Governor Cox, in the article already referred to: — 

"Another incident of my visit must be mentioned. General 
Sherman also was in Boston at the time, and I was invited with 
him to dinner by the Saturday Club, of which Judge Hoar was 
a member. Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes were all 
there, and I need not say it was an occasion to remember. It only 
concerns my present story, however, to tell what occurred just 
before we parted. Mr. Longfellow was presiding, and unexpect- 
edly I found that he was speaking to me In the name of the Club. 
He said that they had been much disturbed by rumours then cur- 

* The story of this occurrence is told by Governor Jacob Dolson Cox in a very inter- 
esting paper in the Atlantic Monthly for August, 1895, entitled, "How Judge Hoar ceased 
to be Attorney-General." 



4^0 The Saturday Club 

rent that Mr. Motley was to be recalled from England on account 
of Senator Sumner's opposition to the San Domingo Treaty. 
They would be very far from seeking to influence any action of 
the President which was based on Mr. Motley's conduct in his 
diplomatic duties, of which they knew little, and could not judge; 
but they thought the President ought to know that if the rumour 
referred to was well founded, he would, in their opinion, offend all 
the educated men of New England. It could not be right to make 
a disagreement with Mr. Sumner prejudice Mr. Motley by reason 
of the friendship between the two. I could only answer that no 
body of men had better right to speak for American men of letters, 
and that I would faithfully convey their message." 

Motley, however, would not resign, and was recalled. This 
action on the part of our Government was received in England 
with surprise and regret. A leading London journal declared that 
" the vacancy he leaves cannot possibly be filled by a Minister more 
sensitive to the interests of his Country and more capable of unit- 
ing the most vigorous performance of his public duties with the 
high-bred courtesy and conciliatory tact and temper that make 
these duties easy and successful." 

On the Fourth of July culminated a plan of Longfellow's which 
for some time had been In his mind, beneficent to the University 
and continuously to the dwellers in Cambridge and to the multi- 
tudes who visit it. On this day Longfellow writes, "Execute the 
deed of the Brighton Meadows for the College." Soon after, he 
wrote to Norton, "A few of us have just presented seventy acres 
of the . . . meadows with your namesake flowing through it and 
making Its favourite flourish of the letter S." From Longfellow's 
door this beautiful expanse may be seen to-day. 

Longfellow, urging Sumner to visit him, cries out In his joy 
in his refuge from July heats and curious visitors: "I never knew 
Nahant in finer flavour than this year. It is a delight to look at 
the sea; and, as for the air, none is so good for me. Thalatta! 
Thalattal And then to think of the daily chowder! Why, no 
bouillabaisse of Aries or Marseilles can compare with It." 

^Thelr amusing and affectionate Uncle Tom (Appleton) who 



had named his boat, for the eldest of his nieces, the "Alice," 
rejoiced in the company of the young people on his short 
cruises. 

Lowell, who, in the spring, had been reading lectures at Balti- 
more and also at Cornell University, found much pleasure in the 
summer in the company of Thomas Hughes, who had made a 
welcome for himself, some years before his coming, by his Tom 
Brown at Rugby^ and, later. At Oxford, and, by showing himself 
a good and understanding friend of the North in the war. He had 
even had the temerity to quote in Parliament Hosea Biglow's 
question: — 

"Who made the law that hurts, John, 
Heads I win, ditto tails? 
J. B. was on his shirts, John, 
Onless my mem'ry fails." 

Now in Boston Hughes was explaining John to Jonathan. 

The following quotation from a letter of Lowell to his friend 
Robert Carter, who wished to get him to contribute to his maga- 
zine, gives us a glimpse into the mind of this writer, scholar, and 
future statesman. Lowell has to decline, saying: " I have not time. 
I have not that happy gift of inspired knowledge so common in this 
country, and work more and more slowly toward conclusions as 
I get older. I give, on an average, twelve hours a day to study 
(after my own fashion), but I find real knowledge slow of ac- 
cumulation. Moreover, I am too busy in the college for a year 
or two yet. It is not the career I should have chosen and I 
half think I was made for better things — but I must make the 
best of it." 

It is interesting to note here that thus early in the reign of 
President Eliot, questioner of time-honoured usage, the Govern- 
ment of the University decided that it should no longer discredit 
itself by bestowing the honorary degree of Master of Arts on any 
alumnus who should, five years after graduation, bring proof, by 
his survival to that period, of his vitality, and, by a gift of five 
dollars to the Treasury, of his reasonable prosperity. These two 
achievements passed as demonstration of his fitness. 



4^2 T^he Saturday Club 

On the 6th of October, the corner-stone was laid of the hall 
built in honouring memory of Harvard's sons who had given their 
lives to save their Country. 

The following notes of that occasion are taken from Mr. 
Emerson's journal: — 

"All was well and wisely done. The storm ceased for us; the 
company was large — the best men and women there — or all but 
a few; the arrangements simple and excellent and every speaker 
successful. Henry Lee, with his uniform sense and courage, the 
Manager; the Chaplain, Rev. Phillips Brooks, offered a prayer In 
which not a word was superfluous and every right thing was said. 
Henry Rogers, William Gray, Dr. Palfrey, made each his proper 
report. Luther's Hymn in Dr. Hedge's translation was sung by a 
great choir, the corner-stone was laid, and then Rockwood Hoar 
read a discourse of perfect sense, taste, and feeling — full of virtue 
and of tenderness. After this, an original song by Wendell Holmes 
was given by the choir. Every part in all these performances was 
in such true feeling that people praised them with broken voices, 
and we all proudly wept. Our Harvard soldiers of the war were 
in their uniforms and heard their own praises, and the tender 
allusions to their dead comrades. General Meade was present, 
and 'adopted by the College,' as Judge Hoar said, and Governor 
Claflln sat by President Eliot. Our English guests, Hughes, Raw- 
lins, Dicey, and Bryce, sat and listened." 

Meantime, Norton, with no foreknowledge of the Invaluable 
service he was to be called on to give to the University for years 
after his return, was diligently fitting himself for It. Having enlarged 
his knowledge of Dante in his loved city, he went in spring to 
Rome, and In both places used every opportunity to gain knowl- 
edge of the church building and the art of the Middle Ages and 
the Renaissance by obtaining access to the old records and his- 
tories. He secured for a summer residence for the family the 
stately Villa Apannocchi a little way outside the walls of Siena 
whence he made excursions with Ruskln. There, as everywhere, 
the Nortons were In happy relations even with the humble people 
around them.^ 

' For the charms of this villa life, see Letters oj Charles Eliot Norton, edited by his 
daughter Sara and M. A. DeWolfe Howe. 



1870 4^3 

Longfellow notes December 31: "The year ends with a Club 
dinner. Agassiz is not well enough to be there. But Emerson and 
Holmes of the older set were, and so I was not quite alone." 

Two new members were chosen during this year, Charles Francis 
Adams, upright, strong, clear-headed statesman, who through 
years of anxiety and peril served his country bravely and well, 
and Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard University. 



CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS 

Charles Francis Adams, who in the third generation of a remark- 
able family upheld its high reputation for ability and public serv- 
ice, possessed, to use his son's words, "a shyness of temper" and 
a "manner chill and repellent" which made a deep impression 
upon his contemporaries and have become associated with his 
name in the minds of his countrymen to such an extent as appre- 
ciably to affect their recognition of his claim to their gratitude. 
It is a singular confirmation of the proverbial saying, "Manners 
make the man." They certainly make what his contemporaries be- 
lieve to be the man. 

Yet though his career did not touch the popular imagination as 
did theirs, it may be doubted whether either his grandfather or his 
father rendered more valuable service to our Country than did he. 
He had a very exceptional education. Before he was two years 
old his father, appointed Minister to Russia, carried him to St. 
Petersburg, where he remained for nearly six years, when his 
mother left that city and in her travelling carriage made a journey 
in midwinter through Europe to Paris where she rejoined his 
father. Her way lay through a country filled with the troops of the 
Allies, and she reached her journey's end three days after Napoleon, 
returned from Elba, had been welcomed in Paris. During the next 
two years he was in England at a boarding-school, while his father 
was our Minister at the Court of St. James, and was taught by his 
schoolmates to understand Englishmen. When at ten years old 
he returned to the United States he had learned to speak French 
as his native tongue, and had seen Europe during what was until 
now the most exciting period in her history, the years of Napo- 
leon's greatest power and his final downfall — a rare educational 
experience. While his father became Secretary of State, he re- 
turned to Quincy where he remained with his grandmother, Mrs. 
John Adams, until her death. He went to the Boston Latin School 
and thence to Harvard College, where he graduated in 1825 at the 



Charles Francis Adams 485 

age of eighteen, a few months after his father had become the 
President of the United States. 

Naturally he joined his parents in Washington and for the next 
three years lived in the White House, where as the President's 
son he had the best possible opportunities for seeing at close range 
the leading men of the Country, and learning perhaps the important 
lesson taught by Chancellor Oxenstiern, '''' quam parva sapientia 
regitur mundus.''^ Surely never was a young man better fitted by 
inheritance, early association, and training to play a great part in 
public life. 

Yet his position had its counterbalancing disadvantages. *'To 
whom much is given, of him much shall be required." The son and 
the grandson of Presidents, he grew up under the shadow of their 
names, and his immaturity was tested by comparison with their 
maturity. A young man with that modesty which should belong 
to youth must shrink from the comparison and hesitate to run the 
risk of discrediting the family by failure. In his case, moreover, 
the affairs of his father were so involved that, to save him from 
great embarrassment and mortification, the son was obliged to take 
charge of his matters, and by provident and skilful management 
reestablished the situation. During the period from 1828 to 1843 
Charles Francis Adams, who had adopted the law as his profes- 
sion, was occupied with practice and the care of his father's 
affairs, while he also contributed various articles on historical sub- 
jects to the North American Review^ and began the work of arrang- 
ing the papers of John Adams. He also achieved a literary success 
with the Letters of Mrs. Adams. 

Till 1840 he had resisted any temptation to take part in politics, 
but in that year he became a Whig candidate for the Massachu- 
setts Legislature and was elected. He served for three years in 
the House of Representatives and two years in the Senate with 
increasing influence, and the experience was of great value to him 
if only because it disabused his mind of the impression that the 
public was prejudiced against him either on account of his family 
or because of some personal trait. The Anti-Slavery agitation in its 
early stages did not touch him, and he had little sympathy with 
the Abolition leaders, but, on the other hand, it was impossible 



4^^ The Saturday Club 

that he should do anything to uphold slavery. Thus, in August, 
1835, he speaks in his diary of a meeting then proposed to counter- 
act Abolition projects, and saying, "the application is signed by 
most of our respectable citizens," adds, "I am glad I had nothing 
to do with it." He watched with disapproval his father's Anti- 
Slavery activity in the National House of Representatives, but 
finally saw that he was right. 

It is interesting in his case, as in that of Mr. Emerson and Mr. 
Sumner, to see how slow they were to realize the importance of the 
slavery question, and to trace the steps by which they were gradu- 
ally converted from indifferent spectators to active opponents of 
slavery. With Mr. Adams the conversion was more rapid than 
with others. Thus we find him recording in his diary the effect 
produced on him by Dr. Channing's pamphlet upon slavery, which 
he says is "certainly a very powerful production and worthy of 
deeper consideration than it has yet been in the way of receiving." 
A few months later he says, "While I entirely dissented from the 
abolition views respecting the District of Columbia ... I would 
by no means give to the principle of slavery anything more than 
the toleration which the Constitution has granted." When Love- 
joy had been murdered, and the city government of Boston tried to 
refuse the use of Faneuil Hall for a meeting to protest against 
mob rule, he wrote: "The craven spirit has got about as far in 
Boston as it can well go. I had a warm argument in Mr. Brooks's 
room with two or three of my [wife's] connections there. They are 
always of the conservative order and I cannot often be." He was 
present at the meeting where James T. Austin made the speech in 
defence of the mob which brought Wendell Phillips to his feet in 
flaming indignation and gave to the cause of Abolition its most elo- 
quent advocate, and in his diary he describes what happened, and 
concludes, "I confess nothing could exceed the mixed disgust and 
indignation which moved me at the doctrines of the learned ex- 
pounder of mob law." 

A fortnight later he writes, " I wish I could be an entire Aboli- 
tionist, but it is impossible. My mind will not come down to the 
point"; and the next year after listening to a debate in the House 
of Representatives we find him writing, "Nothing can save this 



Charles Francis Adams 487 

Country from entire perversion, morally and politically, but the 
predominance of the Abolition principle." 

The Lovejoy murder was in November, 1837, and the words 
which have just been quoted were written in that and the following 
year. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the Massachusetts 
Legislature he became a leader on all questions connected with 
slavery. Mr. C. F. Adams, Jr., in his biography of his father enum- 
erates five subjects involving national issues on which the action 
of the legislature was finally shaped by him. Of these, four are 
connected with slavery; "the law authorizing the marriage of 
personsof different colour; the Latimer fugitive slave case; the con- 
troversy arising out of the expulsion of Mr. Hoar from South Caro- 
lina by the mob of Charleston; and the resistance to the annexa- 
tion of Texas " ; and on the last day of his service, March 26, 1 845, 
he records, "My resolutions placing the Whig Party and the State 
on the basis of resistance to slavery in the general Government 
passed the House by a vote of five to one and constitute, as it 
seems to me, a fair termination of my labours." It is amusing to 
find this man, believed by the public to be cold and unsympathetic, 
reviewing in a few words his legislative experience and saying, 
"My defects of temper and excessive impetuosity have now and 
then brought me into error which I have repented." 

His refusal to serve longer terminated his career in the Legis- 
lature of Massachusetts, but he was now prepared to act in a 
wider sphere. It is impossible, if it were desirable, in a sketch like 
this to do more than give a bare outline of Mr. Adams's career 
from this time on. On May 23, 1846, at his call five men met at 
the State House in Boston to consider the propriety of establishing 
a newspaper to oppose the aggression of slavery. These men were 
John G. Palfrey, Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, and Stephen C. 
Phillips. It is not too much to say that then and there began the 
political campaign against slavery which was to be conducted 
within the lines of the Constitution ; that then and there was planted 
the seed of the Republican Party, though the sowers did not 
realize what that seed would bring forth. 

The newspaper was founded and entitled The Whig^ and it be- 
came the organ of the "Conscience" Whigs of Massachusetts, 



4^8 "The Saturday Club 

and it stood for the doctrine that the only way to save the 
Union was "the total abolition of slavery — the complete eradi- 
cation of the fatal influence it is exercising over the policy of the 
general Government." Its first number appeared on June i, 1846, 
and for some two years Mr. Adams was its unpaid editor and the 
voice of the Conscience Whigs. He had become an Abolitionist, 
but the newspaper weapon with which he undertook the contest 
against the gigantic wrong then entrenched in every department 
of the Government and supported by both great political parties 
and by every strong force in the Country, political, financial, re- 
ligious, and scholastic, was like the sling and stone of David. It 
was twenty-two inches by sixteen in size, and had four pages of 
six columns each, of which one only was given to news and edito- 
rials, and it had two hundred and twelve paying subscribers. It 
was none the less a distinct power during the sharp conflicts over 
the Mexican War and the annexation of Texas, and Mr. Adams 
conducted it with courage, vigour, and absolute plainness of 
speech. He was steadily active in all the political contests of the 
day between Mr. Webster and his followers and Mr. Sumner, 
taking sides with the latter until the contest between cotton and 
conscience resulted in the revolt of 1848, and the convention at 
Buffalo which nominated as the candidates of the Free-Soil Party 
Martin Van Buren for President and Mr. Adams for Vice-Presi- 
dent. When the leader of the Western delegates in the convention 
nominated Mr. Adams and moved that the nomination be made 
unanimous, R. H. Dana says, "Never since my ears first admitted 
sound have I heard such an acclamation. Men sprang upon the 
tops of the seats, threw their hats into the air, and even to the 
ceiling." Of this convention Mr. Adams said many years later, 
"For plain, downright honesty of purpose to effect high ends 
without a whisper of bargain and sale, I doubt whether any similar 
one has been its superior, either before or since." 

The nominations did not defeat General Taylor and polled 
about 300,000 votes, but the movement was another step towards 
the formation of the Republican Party and the destruction of slav- 
ery. It gave Mr. Adams national prominence and showed that 
there was another Adams who was willing to lead a forlorn hope 



Charles Francis Adams 489 

and to stand for principle without regard to personal consequence. 
There followed years of private life devoted largely to the prepara- 
tion of the John Adams papers for publication, which was com- 
pleted in 1856. Meanwhile the Know-Nothing Party, with whose 
proscription of foreign-born citizens Mr. Adams had no sympathy, 
for some years controlled the politics of Massachusetts, and with 
the birth and growth of the Republican Party had gone the way 
of many another ephemeral organization. The campaign of 1856 
had been fought and lost by the Republicans, and in 1858 the door 
again opened for Mr. Adams. He was elected as a Representative 
in Congress and took his seat on December 3, 1859, in the Congress 
which preceded the Civil War. While his party had a majority 
in Congress, the executive departments and the whole official 
society of Washington was Democratic, and the social influences 
of the capital were in sympathy with the Administration. Mr. 
Adams, never disposed to press for his own advancement, did not 
seek appointments on leading committees, and as a result was 
made chairman of the Committee on Manufactures, a committee 
without a room and without business, so that he was without any 
official standing which secured him the ear of the House. During 
the first session, in response to a pressure from his constituents, 
he spoke once, stating calmly but firmly the position of the 
Republican Party and his belief In the certain failure of any at- 
tempt to dissolve the Union, and the position which he established 
in the House may be gathered from Howell Cobb's reference to 
him as "the only member never out of order" and the statement 
in his diary, "There is something singular in the civility formally 
paid me on the other side of the house. I have never courted one of 
them, but I have insulted no one"; following in this at least one 
of the rules laid down by a most distinguished English admiral, 
"Never quarrel. Never explain. Never drudge." 

In the campaign which followed he supported Mr. Seward for 
the Republican nomination, and though not a speaker, went with 
him on an extended election tour and was himself reelected to 
Congress. 

The last session of the Thirty-sixth Congress brought him into 
a position of leadership. The country was face to face with the 



49 o The Saturday Club 

question whether the election of Lincoln was to be followed by dis- 
union, and the pressing duty of the hour was to prevent this ca- 
lamity if possible, or at least to postpone secession until the newly 
elected President, Mr. Lincoln, had been inaugurated. The coun- 
cils of the Republican Party were divided. Some of its leaders 
believed that the threats of secession were merely made for politi- 
cal effect and intended to frighten the Republicans into conces- 
sions which would nullify their victory. Others took them more 
seriously and were satisfied that secession would come, but 
wished to limit its area and to delay decisive action until the 
powers of the Government were in Republican hands. The first 
opposed any talk of compromise as weakening and demoralizing. 
The second desired if possible to put the secession leaders in the 
wrong before the Country and thus strengthen the Union sentiment 
which was strong in the Border States and in some at least of the 
Southern States like Virginia, and thus perhaps retain them in the 
Union. Mr. Sumner, just resuming the position for which he had 
been incapacitated by the blows of Preston Brooks, was promi- 
nent among those who opposed any suggestion of composition, 
while Mr. Adams took the lead on the other side and the discus- 
sions between them became so embittered that their relations, 
hitherto close, were never again the same. In his son's biography 
of him occurs the following: "Mr. Adams did not at the time fully 
appreciate the gravity of the situation or the irresistible force of 
the influences at work. . . . He never did appreciate them. Re- 
ferring to the secession movement of 1861, he twelve years later 
expressed the astonishing belief that 'One single hour of the will 
displayed by General Jackson' in 1833 'would have stifled the 
fire in its cradle.' A similar opinion was expressed by Charles 
Sumner in 1863 ^'^^ ^Y the biographers of Lincoln seventeen years 
later." It Is not entirely clear that Mr. Adams and the others 
were wrong in their opinion. At least it Is shared by others in a 
position to know. A distinguished citizen of South Carolina, the 
scion of a leading family, an officer In the Confederate service, 
the Speaker of the South Carolina House, and eminent In every 
way, said to the writer a few years ago: "There were two ways in 
which secession could have been prevented. Two regiments of regu- 



Charles Francis Adams 49 ^ 

lars in Charleston could have stopped It, and, on the other hand, 
if Mr. Lincoln had let South Carolina go without any effort to 
hold her, the other States would not have followed her example 
and in a few months she would have been begging to come back." 
Such an opinion from such a source is not to be lightly disre- 
garded. In this connection we should remember that Mr. Seward 
was declaring that the President accepted the dogma that "the 
Federal Government could not reduce them [the seceding States] 
to obedience by conquest." Whatever might have been, it was 
clearly the duty of a statesman to find out if possible what the 
Southern leaders really meant, whether any reasonable concession 
would affect their purpose, and, if not, to delay secession as long 
as practicable. This was the policy adopted by Mr. Adams. 

As the representative of Massachusetts on the Committee of 
Thirty-three, one from each State, which was appointed by the 
House of Representatives at the opening of Congress in Decem- 
ber, i860, Mr. Adams occupied a position of great influence, and 
during the whole of the critical session laboured in every way 
to advance this purpose. He favoured discussion, consultation, 
and some measure of concession which should concede nothing 
vital, but yield non-essential points. He sought to make the real 
purpose of the secessionists plain by putting them In a position 
where they must either accept reasonable proposals, or by reject- 
ing them confess that they were determined upon dissolution In 
any event. In the Committee of Thirty-three he offered propos- 
als, aftenvards in substance adopted by the Committee, which 
made distinct concessions, and in the judgment of contemporary 
Republicans went too far, but in his judgment this was necessary 
to accomplish the result at which he aimed, and there was in the 
then state of opinion little danger that they would be accepted by 
the secessionists. It is probable that the latter did not feel sure 
that they could carry all the States which they wished out of the 
Union before the Republicans were actually in power, and they 
perhaps therefore did not press for action. Whatever the reasons, 
the judgment of Mr. Adams was vindicated and the session was 
consumed in discussion without reaching any conclusion. His 
purpose was accomplished when Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated 



492 The Saturday Club 

and the control of the Government passed to the friends of the 
Union. His course was approved by many in the North who might 
otherwise have failed to support the Government and it produced 
some division in the Southern ranks. It undoubtedly added very 
much to Mr. Adams's influence and paved the way for his ap- 
pointment to the English Mission, which was made early in the 
new Administration, though Mr. Adams's instructions did not 
reach him till April 27. 

On May i, Mr. Adams sailed for England to meet the most 
difficult and dangerous situation that ever confronted an Ameri- 
can diplomat. The United States was Involved In a civil war and, 
as in the words of Mr. Lowell, "both our hands were full," the 
Government was in no position to meet any new foe, or to inspire 
any foreign nation with the fear of consequences in case it favoured 
the Confederacy. The situation was confused and even our friends 
found it difficult to understand it. That a nation founded on the 
principle that "governments derive their just powers from the 
consent of the governed" should endeavour by force to retain un- 
der Its sway a large body of Its people who did not consent to be 
governed by It, seemed an abandonment of our entire political 
faith. Those who, hating slavery, would naturally have taken 
sides against the men who founded their Confederacy upon slav- 
ery as a corner-stone, were chilled by the official announcement 
from Washington that the war was prosecuted only to restore the 
Union and that It was not proposed to Interfere with slavery. 
Where both sides proclaimed their purpose to maintain this abom- 
ination, what was the war save an attempt by the North to gov- 
ern the South against Its will. It must be admitted that this view 
could be presented plausibly to men as unable to apprehend the 
true situation as the people of one nation always are to under- 
stand the politics of any other, and till the war had gone on for 
some time the English people did not recognize the real nature 
of the struggle. Though the Liberal Party was In power, the lead- 
ers, with some Important exceptions, sympathized with the feel- 
ings of English society, which was friendly to the Confederacy, for 
various reasons which it Is Idle to recall. There were two great 
dangers to be met. One was Intervention by England and France, 



Charles Francis Adams 493 

the other the use of those countries as bases for hostile operations. 
Either meant war between the United States and one or more 
foreign nations, and in all human probability such an addition to 
the forces of the seceding States as insured their triumph and In- 
calculable disaster to the North. It was Mr. Adams's task to avert 
these dangers, and from the 13th day of May, 1861, when he 
reached London, till the 8th of September, 1863, when he was 
notified that the Laird rams were stopped, his labours and anx- 
ieties were unceasing. 

Mr. Adams was admirably fitted for his work. He represented 
and was known to represent the best that America could produce. 
He was a gentleman, a man of the world, the Inheritor of a great 
name, and coming with all the prestige that these things could 
give him. He was with all his heart and soul enlisted In the cause 
of his Country, he appealed to the moral sense of the English 
people, for he was a bitter opponent of slavery, and personally he 
was cool, firm, self-controlled, very Intelligent, and with many of 
the qualities which characterized Lord John Russell, the English 
Foreign Secretary, so that they understood each other. Mr. 
Adams was clearly a man who would not threaten and who knew 
and would maintain his own rights. 

The story of Mr. Adams's mission has been told so often that 
it is needless to repeat it. Only the briefest outline Is possible 
within the limits of this sketch. The very morning after his ar- 
rival in London the newspapers published the Queen's proclama- 
tion of neutrality, which at the time we regarded as a hostile 
act, but which has since been recognized as the only step possible 
in the circumstances and as really of value to the Government of 
the United States, since belligerency gives the combatant rights 
over neutral shipping which were of great importance to us in the 
enforcement of the blockade. Mr. Seward's extraordinary Idea 
that the way to restore the Union was to provoke a war with the 
leading powers of Europe, an idea communicated to Mr. Adams 
by Mr. Seward in a dispatch received on June 10, made him feel 
that the situation was very precarious. We find in his diary: "The 
Government seems ready to declare war with all the powers of 
Europe, and almost instructs me to withdraw from communica- 



494 The Saturday Club 

tlon with the Minister here in a certain contingency. I scarcely 
know how to understand Mr. Seward," Happily Mr. Lincoln at 
home refused to sanction the policy, and Mr. Adams in London 
was absolutely out of sympathy with it. His feeling is shown by the 
words In his diary: "My duty here is, so far as I can do it honestly, 
to prevent the neutrals from coming to a downright quarrel. It 
seems to me like throwing the game into the hands of the enemy. 
... If a conflict with a handful of slaveholding States Is to bring 
us to (our present pass), what are we to do when we throw down 
the glove to Europe .f*" One cannot help wondering where the world 
would be to-day If the Chicago Convention had nominated Seward 
instead of Lincoln, as Mr. Adams and a host of other wise men 
desired. Fortunately there was then no Atlantic cable, and in its 
absence an Ambassador was not followed by daily messages, so 
that the Minister could exercise a much larger discretion than is 
now possible, and by the exercise of sound discretion he pre- 
served pleasant relations till all danger that Mr. Seward's coun- 
sels would prevail had passed. 

In common with the other foreign representatives of the United 
States Mr. Adams early in his mission was instructed to make 
some agreement with England for the adhesion of the United 
States to the Declaration of Paris, which among other things 
abolished privateering. Until this time the United States had 
refused to become a party to this treaty unless it was agreed that 
private property on the sea should be exempt from capture, and 
the proposal now to abandon this position when the Confederate 
States with no property at sea were proposing to employ privateers 
embarrassed the English Government professedly neutral and 
by no means hostile to the Confederacy. If the proposal of the 
United States was accepted, England might be called upon to 
treat Confederate privateers as pirates, and the Alabama and 
Florida would have been outlaws. Hence, after long and unsatis- 
factory negotiations. Lord Russell replied to Mr. Adams's pro- 
posal to accept the Declaration of Paris absolutely by imposing 
the condition that the new convention should have no effect "di- 
rect or indirect on the internal difficulties now prevailing in the 
United States." This ended the negotiation, but it left the English 



Charles Francis Adams 495 



Government in an embarrassing position, since the Declaration 
of Paris offered every nation the opportunity to become a party 
by notifying its election to do so, and this offer was now with- 
drawn when for the first time it became a practical question whether 
the Declaration of Paris should govern the action of England and 
the United States. Lord Russell's course was natural, but it can- 
not have been agreeable to him. 

Then out of a clear sky came the taking of the Confederate 
envoys. Mason and Slidell, by Captain Wilkes from the British 
mail steamer Trent on the high seas. This unwarranted act, ex- 
citing in the United States the wildest enthusiasm and in England 
the deepest indignation, brought the two countries to the verge of 
war. Had the Atlantic cable been then in operation it would prob- 
ably have been impossible to avoid it. Happily the slower methods 
of the day gave both countries time to cool and their statesmen 
time to think, and the incident was closed happily by the sur- 
render of the envoys. The negotiations which resulted in the 
surrender were carried on at Washington so that Mr. Adams was 
not directly concerned in them. His duty was to keep cool, to 
preserve pleasant relations with Lord Russell, and to keep his 
Government fully advised of the situation in England and its 
dangers. His dispatch, written shortly after his first interview 
with Lord Russell on the subject, reached Washington in time for 
the conference at which the final decision was reached, and un- 
doubtedly contributed to the result. 

The situation in England after this became very acute. The 
blockade cut off the supply of cotton upon which the English man- 
ufacturers depended, and the condition in the manufacturing dis- 
tricts became most distressing. During the six months ending in 
May, 1862, less than one per cent as much cotton was received in 
England from America as in the same six months during the pre- 
vious year. "By the end of September, 1862, out of 80,000 opera- 
tives in five localities in Lancashire only 14,000 were working full 
time." In October 176,000 people in twenty-four unions were re- 
ceiving poor relief, in January, 1863, the number of persons de- 
pendent on relief was estimated at 457,000, and in France condi- 
tions were not better. It was an appalling situation and there was 



49^ The Saturday Club 

no apparent escape from It while the United States maintained its 
blockade of the Southern ports. The French Emperor was anxious 
to intervene and was trying to persuade the English Government 
to join him in so doing. The pressure from commercial circles was 
extreme as may well be imagined. On our side of the water the 
year 1862 had opened well for the Government, but during the 
summer the Confederates had won conspicuous victories, and their 
partisans in England were much elated. It was a period of acute 
anxiety for Mr. Adams as for every friend of the North. 

Happily the operatives who were the greatest sufferers felt that 
the North was fighting for their cause, and they bore their suffer- 
ings patiently. Richard Cobden, John Bright, and W. E. Forster 
who represented the manufacturing districts and were the- recog- 
nized leaders of the labouring classes stood firm against inter- 
vention. Members of the Cabinet too numerous and influential 
to be disregarded indicated clearly their opposition, and the Cabi- 
net meeting called to decide on intervention was not held. Mr. 
Adams was under positive instructions to meet firmly any sug- 
gestion by the English Government of any purpose "to dictate 
or to mediate, or to advise, or even to solicit or persuade." "You 
will answer that you are forbidden to debate, to hear, or in any 
way receive, entertain, or transmit any communication of the 
kind." 

He received further instructions in the event of recognition or 
hostile action to suspend the exercises of his functions, and in case 
of any act or declaration of war to ask for his passports and return 
at once. Mr. Adams could only suspect what was going on in the 
Cabinet, and what negotiations were pending with France, and 
feeling the great danger of making matters worse by some un- 
fortunate word if he sought an interview with Lord Russell, he 
contented himself with telling his friend Mr. Forster in confidence 
what his instructions were, leaving him to act as he thought best. 
About this time Gladstone made his foolish speech in which he said 
that the Southern leaders "have made a nation" and stated his 
opinion that their success was "as certain as any event yet future 
and contingent can be." It was only when the crisis had passed 
on the day when the Cabinet meeting was to have been held that 



Charles Francis Adams 497 

Mr. Adams, in an interview with Lord Russell, said, "If I had 
entirely trusted to the construction given by the public to a late 
speech, I should have begun to think of packing my carpet-bag and 
trunks," a remark which led Lord Russell to express the regret 
of Lord Palmerston and other Ministers for Mr. Gladstone's in- 
discretion. In this crisis Mr. Adams served his Country not by 
what he did, but by his wise silence. Had he hinted at his instruc- 
tions, or used any threatening words, or even forced a discussion 
with Lord Russell, he would in all probability have precipitated 
the action which he was anxious to prevent. Few American am- 
bassadors would have shown the self-control which in this case was 
the height of wisdom. 

The preliminary Proclamation of Emancipation of September 
22, 1862, and the final edict of January i, 1863, secured us against 
English intervention. As we look back, how short was the time 
between the firing on Sumter and the end of slavery, yet how long 
it seemed as it passed. It strikes us as extraordinary that the 
Proclamation was received with generally hostile comment by the 
English press. It was regarded as futile at best, and at worst as 
intended to provoke a servile insurrection with all its horrors. The 
misrepresentations of fact, and the bitterly hostile criticism with 
which the newspapers were filled pass belief, but these were the 
expressions of a hostile minority. The heart of the English people 
was sound and soon found convincing expression. John Bright 
spoke first applauding the Proclamation, and meeting after meet- 
ing swelled the chorus of approbation, until the governors of Eng- 
land realized the feeling of the people and recognized that any 
Intervention in behalf of the Confederacy was impossible. This 
is a chapter in English history that every one who loves freedom 
should forget. The folly of a few should not be permitted to 
colour our feeling towards the great British nation whose support 
in our great crisis assured our victory, and who, whatever misun- 
derstanding may have occurred, are essentially one with us in all 
that assures the freedom and civilization of mankind. 

In the matters which have been chronicled Mr. Adams served 
his Country by wise silence and inaction, but in another class of 
cases he showed that he could act. The facts in regard to the 



49 8 The Saturday Club 

privateer Alabama and the Laird ironclads have been many times 
repeated. Mr. Adams was indefatigable in his attempts to prevent 
the escape of the Alabama. With the assistance of our consul at 
Liverpool, Mr. Dudley, who kept him fully advised as to the facts, 
he pressed the truth vigorously and constantly upon the British 
Government only to encounter doubt and incredulity and in- 
vincible repugnance to act until the Alabama did escape, and by 
her subsequent course proved that he had been right and that the 
English Government had either been foolishly blind or wilfully 
negligent. 

The Alabama did enormous damage, but the Laird rams, iron- 
clad vessels which to-day would be laughed at, but which in the 
then state of naval architecture were more formidable than any 
war vessel in the American Navy, if let loose were able to sink 
our blockading fleet and perhaps change the whole aspect of the 
struggle. The plot to send them forth was skilfully conceived and 
legally perfect, and the British Cabinet faltered and hesitated 
till the last moment. It was when his cause seemed lost that Mr. 
Adams sent Lord Russell the dispatch which contained the words, 
better remembered than any in our diplomatic history, " It would 
be superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war." 
This dispatch was sent on September 5, 1863, and the Morn- 
ing Post of September 8 announced that the rams were stopped.^ 

From that day Mr. Adams had a different position, and until 
he resigned his mission in 1868 he was implicitly trusted at home 
and universally respected abroad. In a very difficult position 
he had so conducted himself as to deserve the praise of James 
Russell Lowell, his future successor, who said, "None of our gen- 
erals in the field, not Grant himself, did us better or more trying 
service than he in his forlorn outpost of London. Cavour did 
hardly more for Italy." 

One legacy of his diplomatic service remained, the so-called 
Alabama Claims. The war left the relations between the United 
States and Great Britain in a precarious condition. The course 
of the English Ministry during the war, the hostile and sneering 
criticisms of English statesmen and newspapers, and, above all, 

* See note on page 502. 



Charles Francis Adams 499 

the lack of sympathy with the North, which, as we knew, was 
fighting to abolish slavery, on the part of men who had always 
condemned us because we did not abolish it, had left in this coun- 
try a great feeling of irritation, well expressed by Mr. Lowell in 
the second series of Biglow Papers. When men like him felt as he 
did it was perfectly clear that there must be a latent indignation 
among the masses that boded ill for the future. Great Britain real- 
ized her mistake, knew that, as Lowell said, "her bonds were held 
by Fate, like all the world's besides," and her statesmen began to 
bestir themselves. As a result we have the Geneva Arbitration 
which resulted in a payment by Great Britain and, as far as was 
humanly possible, mended the relations between the two countries. 
The Geneva Tribunal consisted of three neutral arbitrators, 
Mr. Alexander Cockburn, Chief Justice of England, and Mr. Adams. 
It nearly encountered shipwreck at the outset, for when the Amer- 
ican case was presented it contained such an enormous claim for 
indirect damages caused by the recognition of belligerency among 
other things, that no English Government could live which put 
England in a position to pay so vast a sum. After the claims were 
presented the tribunal adjourned for six months, and during the 
Interval the English people became very much excited and there 
was very grave danger that the arbitration would be abandoned. 
Mr. Adams saved the situation, and, after negotiation with the 
representatives of England and conference with his colleagues, 
moved that the claims for Indirect damages be ruled out of con- 
sideration as unjustified by International law. This was done and 
the arbitration proceeded to its satisfactory end. Mr. Adams 
alone was In a position to take this step, and though it involved a 
grave responsibility he did not hesitate, and two great nations 
should be grateful to him for what he did. Even if he believed that 
he was assured of his own Government's support before he pro- 
ceeded, his act was none the less wise and brave. In this connec- 
tion a single personal reminiscence may be ventured. Mr. Adams 
told the writer that when the arbitrators entered the room in 
which the sittings of the Geneva Tribunal were to be held, it was 
found that on a raised dais were seats for the three neutral arbi- 
trators, while on a lower level in front was a long table with a seat 



500 The Saturday Club 



at each end, one for Chief Justice Cockburn, the other for Mr. 
Adams. Upon seeing it the Chief Justice turned to Mr. Adams 
and said, "You see that they understand perfectly what our re- 
lation is to this tribunal." 

In the spring of 1872 it was clear that many leaders of public 
opinion in this country were disgusted with the first adminis- 
tration of President Grant and anxious to defeat him. The 
Democratic Party, thoroughly discredited by its course during 
the war, could not hope to find among its leaders any man who 
could hope to defeat so popular a hero as the President, and some 
one who would make a strong appeal to the Country must be 
found among the dissatisfied Republicans. There was no one who 
could be named in the same day with Mr. Adams for the nomina- 
tion. His family name, his tried loyalty to Republican principles, 
his great and freshly remembered services in England, and many 
other considerations made him the obvious nominee, and he was 
supported by many of the best men in the country. The move- 
ment seemed likely to succeed, but by one of those strange acci- 
dents which happen in politics, Horace Greeley, of all Americans 
the one least likely to inspire the Democratic Party with enthu- 
siasm and possessing few qualifications for the chief magistracy, 
was nominated in his stead. Why this happened has never been 
explained satisfactorily, but in the opinion of many a letter which 
Mr. Adams wrote showed such indiiference to the opportunity 
that It alienated his supporters. He was of all men the least in- 
clined to push himself, and an exaggeration of his reluctance to 
so doing probably led him to express a greater indiiference than 
he felt. Whatever the cause, the choice of Mr. Greeley was fatal 
to the movement, and General Grant was reelected triumphantly 
and gave the country an administration of which no friend of 
his can be proud. It was another example of the rule that a suc- 
cessful soldier is not likely to make a good constitutional ruler. 

Mr. Adams's comment on the result was characteristic. "This," 
he wrote, "was odd enough. This completely oversets all the cal- 
culations of the original authors of the conventions, for success 
with such a candidate Is out of the question. My first sense is one 
of great relief at being out of the meleeP 



Charles Francis Adams ^o\ 

When the Geneva Tribunal dissolved on September 14, 1872, 
Mr. Adams wrote: " I walked home musing. It is now eleven years 
since this mission was given to me. Through good report and evil 
report my action has been associated with its progress. ... I may 
hope to consider it as an honourable termination to my public 
career." So indeed it proved. He was then only sixty-five years 
old, but his work was done, and his record made, a record of which 
he, his family, and all Americans had a right to be proud. From 
that time on he devoted himself to the completion of the literary 
labour in connection with the papers of his father and grand- 
father, which he had undertaken many years before, and which 
he completed when the last volume was published in August, 
1877. There remained only quiet and uneventful years until his 
death on November 21, 1886. He and Mrs. Adams celebrated 
their golden wedding in the home where his parents and grand- 
parents had welcomed the like anniversary, a record which can 
hardly be paralleled, so that his public and his private life were 
both well rounded, and the final sleep came in the fulness of time 
and found nothing for tears. 

He was a man whose character was marked by great simplicity, 
directness, and earnestness. He was absolutely straightforward 
and sincere. The ends he aimed at were "his Country's, his God's 
and Truth's." He had no desire to shine, little personal ambi- 
tion, no taste for political contests, no gifts as an orator, no faculty 
for attracting the crowd. He was by nature dignified and self- 
controlled, but under his apparently cool exterior was concealed 
intensity of conviction and undaunted courage. Whether he was 
facing the social magnates of Boston in the fight against slavery, 
or the corresponding forces in England, when the same battle 
was fighting there, he never flinched. Nor was he without a sense 
of humour, for the writer well remembers a stupid mistake which 
he made in a game of whist one evening, kept Mr. Adams laugh- 
ing at intervals for what seemed the rest of the evening. 

The following extract from his diary reveals much of his char- 
acter which some of his contemporaries did not suspect. It was 
written after attending the funeral of Richard Cobden, and after 
describing the scene at the grave he goes on: "There was emotion 



so 2 T^he Saturday Club 

shown by none so much as by Mr. Bright. No pageant could have 
touched me so much. I felt my eyes filling from mere human sym- 
pathy. The deceased statesman had fought his way to fame and 
honour by the single force of his character. He had nothing to give, 
no wealth, no honours, no preferment; a lifelong contempt of the 
ruling class of his countrymen had earned for him their secret 
ill-will, marked on this day by the almost total absence of repre- 
sentatives here. And of all foreign nations, I alone, the type of a 
great democracy, stood to bear witness to the scene. The real 
power that was present in the multitude crowding around this life- 
less form was not the less gigantic for all this absence. In this 
country it may be said to owe its existence to Mr. Cobden. He 
first taught them by precept and example that the right of govern- 
ment was not really to the few but to the many. He shook the 
pillars of aristocracy by proving that he could wield influence 
without selling himself to them, or without recourse to the acts of 
a demagogue. Thus he becomes the founder of a new school, the 
influence of which is only just beginning to be felt. In the next 
century the effects will be visible." 

In this passage the writer reveals himself and here we may leave 
him, believing that in him there lived and died "a loyal, just, and 
upright gentleman." 

M. S. 

Note. — When Lord Russell's biography was published in 1889, 
it appeared that the order stopping the rams was given on Sep- 
tember 3 and not in consequence of Mr. Adams's letter. 

Dr. Eliot, our President and senior member, happily for us 
still here, must therefore miss reading our sketch of his virtues 
and large accomplishment. 



THE END 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Adams, Charles Francis, Minister to Eng- 
land, 253, 313, 314, 448, 492; offered presi- 
dency of Harvard, 449; relations with 
Sumner, 453,490; childhood, 484; educa- 
tion, 484, 485 ; a lawyer and writer, 485 ; in 
the Massachusetts legislature, 485, 487; 
conversion to Abolition principles, 486, 
487; editor of the fFhig, 487, 488; Free- 
Soil candidate for Vice-Presidency, 488; 
in Congress, 489; attitude toward seces- 
sion, 490, 491; in the Committee of Thirty- 
three, 491; last years and death, 501; his 
character, 501. 

Adams, Charles Francis, Jr., 20, 23 ; on R. H. 
Dana, Jr., 41-44, 67, 68, 236; on Judge 
Hoar, 67, 68, 461, 463; on Horatio Wood- 
man, 124; in the Union Army, 290, 344; 
biography of his father cited, 487, 490. 

Adirondack Club, the, 125, 128, 130, 131; 
first camp of, 169-76. 

Agassiz, Alexander, 31, 36. 

Agassiz, Louis, 23; characteristics, 24, 30, 
31; aided by Humboldt and Lyell, 30, 35; 
professor at Harvard, 30, 36; Emerson on, 
31, 35; anecdotes of, 32, 36, 37; Holmes's 
appellation for, 33; friendship with Long- 
fellow, 33, 353; the six bottles of wine, 
354; influence on Harvard College, 33; 
establishes school for girls, 33, 34; method 
of teaching, 34; Museum of Natural His- 
tory, 35, 37, 38, 202, 319; a religious 
man, 35; marries Elizabeth Cary, 36; de- 
clines offer of French Emperor, 38, 255; 
fiftieth birthday dinner, 131; dinner in 
1865, 396-99; experiences in Brazil, 412- 
14; on the dodo, 415; health fails, 477. 

Alabama, the, Confederate privateer, 498. 

Alabama claims, the, 498-501. 

Albion Hotel, the, onTremont St., 12, 21. 

Alcott, A. Bronson, and Henry James, Sr., 
328, 329- 

Allingham, William, tribute to Hawthorne, 
215, 216, 351. 

Amory, William, letter of Motley to, 84, 186. 

Ampersand Pond, 130, 131. 

Anderson, Major Robert, Holmes's impres- 
sion of, 405. 

Andrew, John Albion, War Governor of 
Massachusetts, 250, 290, 291, 358-65; 
works actively for reelection of Lincoln, 
351; becomes a member of the Club, 356, 



363; birth and education, 357; influenced 
by George Thompson, 357; an active 
Republican, 358; anecdotes of, 359, 360, 
363, 364; opinion of Lincoln, 361, 362; 
legislature antagonistic to, 362, 363; 
Norton's estimate of, 365; Forbes's esti- 
mate, 392; offered presidency of Antioch 
College, and Collectorship of Port, 409; on 
the race question, 432; suggested as suc- 
cessor to Sumner in the Senate, 433; sud- 
den death, 433; some estimates of, 434-36. 

Anthology Club, the, 10 n. 

Appleton, Nathan, 31. 

Appleton, Thomas Gold, 8; college room- 
mate of Motley, 83; a Beacon Hill Bos- 
tonian, 217; some boyhood playmates, 
217; school and college, 217, 218; dared 
wear a moustache, 218; spent much time 
abroad, 218-24; had the temperament 
of genius, 218, 220; disliked Germans, 219; 
an art amateur, 220, 221; his faith in the 
unseen, 222; generous to artists, 222, 223; 
letter to Longfellow from Egypt, 223; 
The Loon, quoted, 224; some of his good 
sayings, 225; public-spirited and gener- 
ous, 226; characterized by Holmes, 460. 

Arnold, Matthew, criticism of Emerson, 

497- 
Aspinwall, William H., 251; commissioner 

to England, 312, 313. 
Athenaeum Library, the, frequented by 

Emerson, 12, 54; building of, 263. 
Atkinson, Edward, forms Educational Com- 
mission, 292. 
Atlantic cable, the first, 176; Holmes's poem 

about, 177, 178. 
Atlantic Club, the, li, 16, 18, 190. 
Atlantic Monthly, the, beginning of, 14, 17, 

128, 129; christened by Dr. Holmes, 129; 

growing, 200; patriotic, 256. 
Austin, James T., 486. 

Bacon, Delia, aided by Hawthorne in pub- 
lication of her Shakspeare book, 213, 214. 

Bagehot, Walter, parallelism of his literary 
career with Whipple's, 117, 118. 

Bancroft, George, 83, 277, 279, 283. 

Bangs, Edward, lawyer, 8. 

Barker, Anna (Mrs. Samuel G. Ward), 109, 
no. 

Barlow, Gen. Francis C, 336. 



5c6 



Index 



Barnum, Phineas T., icx). 

Barrie, Sir James, in Salem, 210. 

Bartol, Dr. Cyrus A., tribute to Whipple, 
122, 123. 

Bates, Joshua, iii. 

Bellows, Rev. Henry W., head of the Sani- 
tary Commission, 258. 

Bigelow, Erastus, 475. 

Bigelow, Dr. Jacob, 145, 146. 

Bird, Francis W., 295; on Gov. Andrew, 
435,436. 

Bismarck, Prince, friendship with Motley, 
88, 89; letter from Motley (1870), 94. 

Blaine, James G., 189. 

Bostonian, Dr. Holmes's typical, 82. 

Bowditch, Dr. Henry IngersoU, 51, 52; on 
Dr. Howe, 275; on Jeffries Wyman, 423, 
424. 

Bowditch, Prof. Henry P., 290, 321. 

Bradford, George Partridge, teacher, 8. 

Breckinridge, John C, Vice-President, 250. 

Bridge, Horatio, and Hawthorne, 209, 349. 

Bridgman, Laura, 272. 

Bright, John, 496, 497, 502. 

Brillat-Savarin, Anthelme, La Pkysiologie du 
Gout, 115. 

Brimmer, Martin, chosen a member of the 
Club, 356, 369; birth and ancestry, 366; 
education, 366, 367; marriage, 367; public 
services, 368, 369; connection with the 
Museum of Fine Arts, 368-70; death, 369; 
an admirer of Millet, 370, 466; social life 
and hospitality, 372, 373; described by 
John Jay Chapman, 373, 374; tributes to, 

374, 375- 

Brook Farm, 49. 

Brooks, Charles T., 402; poem in honour of 
Dr. Howe, 275. 

Brooks, Phillips, 70, 401. 

Brown, Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Haw- 
thorne's landlord, 209, 210. 

Brown, John, and J. M. Forbes, 202, 203; 
at Harper's Ferry, 205; his speech in court, 
205 n. 

Brownell, Henry Howard, war poems quoted, 
294, 296; introduced to the Club, 399, 
400. 

Browning, Mrs. E. B., 222. 

Browning, Robert, 380. 

Bruce, Sir Frederick, British Minister, 405. 

Bull, Ephraim Wales, producer of the Con- 
cord grape, 414. 

Bull, Ole, and Longfellow, 139. 

Burlingame, Anson, guest of the Club, 406. 

Burns, Anthony, attempted rescue of, 274 n. 

Burns, Robert, centennial, 197. 

Burr, Aaron, anecdote of, 439. 



Butler, Benjamin F., 64. 
Byron, Lord, his helmet owned by Dr. 
Howe, 270 n, 

Cabot, James Elliot, 6, 20 «.; family, 260, 
262; at Harvard, 260; a student in Eu- 
rope, 260, 261; becomes a lawyer, 262; 
attracts Emerson's attention, 262; en- 
gages in building, 263, 264; married, 264; 
active in many ways, 264; close friendship 
with Emerson, 265; helps prepare Letters 
and Social Aims for the press, 266; 
Emerson's literary executor, 266; writes 
Life of Emerson, 266, 267; characteristics 
of, 267, 268. 

Carlyle, Thomas, French Revolution con- 
demned by Prescott, 184; friendship with 
Norton, 243; Henry James, Sr., on, 330; 
his munificent gift to Harvard, 463. 

Carpenter, George R., on Whittier's friend- 
ships with women, 193. 

Carter, Robert, 274 n., 282, 481. 

Chambered Nautilus^ The, 167, 168. 

Chandler, Peleg W., 363. 

Channing, William Ellery, on Hawthrone, 
211. 

Channing, William Henry, 7, 8. 

Chapman, John Jay, sketch of Martin 
Brimmer quoted, 367, 372-74. 

Cheever, Dr. David, memories of Dr. 
Holmes, 143, 146, 147. 

Cheney, Mrs. Ednah Dow, 12. 

Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, 
228, 229. 

Choate, Rufus, indifferent in cases of Sims 
and Burns, 125. 

Cholmondeley, Thomas, 13; and Thoreau, 

^ 59- 

Claflin, Mrs. William, 193. 

Clark, Alvan, telescope maker, 55. 

Clarke, James Freeman, 166, 295; read the 
service at Hawthorne's funeral, 346. 

Clough, Arthur Hugh, 130, 163, 284; Rowse's 
portrait of, 389, 390. 

Cobb, Howell, 489. 

Cobden, Richard, 496; C. F. Adams's esti- 
mate of, 501, 502. 

Codman, Col. Charles R., 290. 

"Cold Roast Boston," 222. 

CoUyer, Rev. Robert, account of the Club's 
reception of Agassiz, 413. 

Conkling, Roscoe, 302. 

Conway, Moncure D., helps protect Emer- 
son's literary rights, 265. 

Cooke, George Willis, Life of Dwight 
quoted, 47. 

Copyright, international, 418, 453. 



Index 



507 



Couture, Thomas, influence on W. M. Hunt, 

466, 469. 
Cox, Gov. Jacob Dolson, quoted, 93, 94, 

479, 480. 
Cranch, Christopher Pearse, 75, 411; and 

J. S. Dwight, 47. 
Crayon, the, first American art magazine, 

13°: 
Criticism, dangerous, 475. 
Curtis, George William, at Ashfield, 246, 

347; friend of Dr. Hedge, 279; on J. T. 

Fields, 378, 379. 

Dana, Richard Henry, Sr., 39. 

Dana, Richard Henry, Jr., diary quoted, 13, 
24, 25; a good raconteur, 23, 34, 43; birth, 
39; pupil under Emerson, 39; before the 
mast, 39, 40; an admiralty lawyer, 40; 
a Free-Soiler, 40-42; his connection with 
the Club, 42, 43; a favourite story of, 43; 
appreciated the classics, 43; lacking in 
tact, 44; religious feeling, 45; voyage 
around the world, 236, 237; public service, 
344,410,411; in the trial of Jefferson 
Davis, 429. 

Dante, Longfellow's work on, 139, 140, 242, 
395) 438; Norton's translation, 242; 
Holmes's lack of interest in, 438, 439. 

Davis, Admiral Charles H., 104. 

Davis, Jefferson, tried for treason, 429. 

Declaration of Paris, the, 494, 495. 

Desor, Edward, Swiss naturalist, 8. 

Dewhurst, Stephen, 323. 

Dickens, Charles, entertained in Boston, 

437, 438. . . 

Dickinson, Lowes, English portrait painter, 
469. 

Dunlap, Frances, afterward Mrs. Lowell, 
285. 

Dwight, John Sullivan, in the Fable for 
Critics, 46; a born lover of music, 46; birth, 
47; educated for the ministry, 47, 48; 
exchanges personal criticisms with The- 
odore Parker, 47; immersed in German 
studies, 48; hterary work, 48, 49; at 
Brook Farm, 49; marries Mary BuUard, 
49; Dwight' s Journal of Music, 49, 50, 51; 
visits Europe, 50; opinion of Wagner, 50; 
his influence, 51, 52; on the taste of 
mushrooms, 126; occupies Dr. Hedge's 
pulpit in Bangor, 279; plans Jubilee 
Concert (1863), 309; Horatian Ode for 
the Harvard Commemoration, 402. 

Educational Commission, formed, 292, 293. 

Eliot. President Charles W., 320; introduces 

changes at Harvard, 244, 476-78; chosen 



into the Club, 483 ; President of the Club, 
502. 

Ellis, Dr. Rufus, 183. 

Emancipation Proclamation, the. Gov. An- 
drew's opinion of, 361; reception in Eng- 
land, 497. 

Emerson, Edward Bliss, 305. 

Emerson, Ellen, quoted, 141. 

Emerson, Mary Moody, anecdote of, 3 28, 3 29. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, suggests cipher for 
a seal, 5; friendship with Samuel G. Ward, 
5-10, 54, 113, 114, 116, 338; relations with 
Longfellow, 26, 27, 336; on Agassiz, 31, 
35, 414; as a teacher, 39; birth and educa- 
tion, 53; his interests universal, 53, 54; im- 
portance of the Club to, 55-59; a good 
listener, 55, 58; suffered from unexpected 
shots of wit, 56, 57; most abstemious of 
smokers, 60, 61; personal appearance, 61; 
"our Greek-Yankee," 118; verse sketch of 
Horatio Woodman, 125; appreciation of 
Dr. Holmes, 151, 152; on immoral laws, 
168 n.; with the Adirondack Club, 171-76; 
verse picture of W. J. Stillman, 175, 176; 
and Whittier, 192; Birthday Verses for 
Lowell, 200-02; address at Dr. Holmes's 
fiftieth birthday dinner, 203-05; relations 
with J. Elliot Cabot, 265-67; bored by the 
"society of mere literary men," 278; 
preached for Dr. Hedge at Bangor, 278, 
279; characterizes Estes Howe in verse, 
283; on Holmes's convivial talent, 291; 
characterizes Sumner, 305; Boston Hymn 
quoted, 309, 310; advice to Hawthorne, 
315; Voluntaries quoted, 318; friendship 
with Henry James, Sr., 324, 325; notes on 
the Club, 336-39, 341, 342; on Haw- 
thorne's death, 346; and Forceythe Will- 
son, 400; sketch of Jeffries Wyman in 
verse, 424; twice Phi Beta Kappa orator, 
431; a Lyceum experience, 400, 441; an 
admirer of Thoreau, 475,476; his exquisite 
choice of phrases, 477; lectures on philos- 
ophy at Harvard, 477, 478; notes on the 
laying of the corner-stone of Memorial 
Hall, 482. 

Eustis, Prof. Henry Lawrence, 9. 

Everett, Edward, 76; and Benjamin Pelrce, 
100; first president of Union Club, 311; 
and Aaron Burr, 439. 

Everett, William, 439; on Motley's influence, 
90. 

Farragut, Admiral David G., Dr. Holmes's 

impressions of, 405. 
Fechter, Charles Albert, actor of Hamlet, 

47S, 476. 



5o8 



Index 



Felton, Cornelius Conway, letter to F. H. 
Underwood, 15; joins the Club, 19, 20, 
162; political difference with Sumner, 28, 
162; birth and education, 159; an en- 
thusiastic classical student, 159; personal 
characteristics, 160; literary work, 160, 
161; idolized among the Greeks, 162; 
anecdotes of, 163; president of Harvard, 
163, 164; death, 164, 165, 288, 289; warm 
friend of Dr. Howe, 272; on J. T. Fields, 
379> 380. 

Felton, John Brooks, younger brother of 
President Felton, anecdote of, 163. 

Felton, Samuel M., brother of President 
Felton, 252. 

Ferguson, Robert, recollections of Club 
members, 352, 353. 

Fessenden, Hon. William Pitt, 392, 448. 

Fields, James Thomas, 68, 153; Yesterdays 
with Authors quoted, 314, 215, 350, 376; 
estimate of Hawthorne, 350; becomes a 
member of the Club, 356, 376; as a writer, 
376; birth and boyhood, 376, 377; enters 
the Old Corner Bookstore, 377; becomes 
a member of Ticknor, Reed & Fields 
(later Ticknor & Fields), 378; influence 
of his personality, 378-81; relations with 
authors, 380, 381; marriage, 381; the 
Charles Street house, 381; reminiscences 
of the Club, 381-86; death, 387. 

Fields, Mrs. James T., 193; describes Dr. 
Holmes, 153; story of Hawthorne, 207; 
unpublished journals quoted, 381-86, 
396, 449, 452, 453; describes Bret Harte, 

.384- 385- 

Firkins, Prof. O. W., Study of Emerson 
quoted, 55, 56. 

Fish, Hamilton, and Motley, 92, 93, 459. 

Fisher, Dr. John Dix, chooses Dr. Howe for 
Asylum for the Blind, 271. 

Flagg, George A., reminiscences of Benja- 
min Peirce, 97. 

Flint, Charles L., President of Massachu- 
setts Agricultural Society, 22. 

Follansbee Pond, 169, 170. 

Follen, Dr. Karl, on titles in America, 448. 

Forbes, John Murray, 126; aids John 
Brown, 202, 229; birth and education, 
227; goes to China, 227; ancestry, 228; 
engages in railroading, 228; his relation to 
business, 229; his island, Naushon, 230, 
231; widely influential, 231, 232; never 
held a political office, 232; an indefatiga- 
ble patriot, 239, 250, 294, 311, 312; en- 
gages steamers to take Massachusetts 
troops to Washington, 252, 253; promotes 
use of negroes as soldiers, 293; commis- 



sioner to England, 312, 313; anecdote 

of, 416; and Jeffries Wyman, 421, 42a; 

anxious about Reconstruction, 430, 447, 

448. 
Forbes, Robert Bennet, 228, 230, 422. 
Forbes, Col. William Hathaway, 233. 
Forster, John, an admirer of Felton, 161. 
Forster, W. E., and C. F. Adams, 496. 
Fort Sumter, fall of, 251, 252. 
Fox, Lieut. Gustavus B., afterward Assistant 

Secretary of the Navy, 251, 254. 
Fugitive Slave Law, 66, 168. 
Fuller, Margaret, 109, 450 n. 
Furness, Horace Howard, 225. 

Geneva Tribunal, the, 499-501. 

Gilman, Arthur, Atlantic Dinners and 

Diners, 18. 
Gladstone, William Ewart, foolish speech by, 

496, 497- TO 

Godkin, Edwin L., on Henry James, Sr., 
325; editor of the Nation, 404. 

Godwin, Parke, 49. 

Golding, Frank, on Judge Hoar, 66. 

Grant, President U. S., appoints Motley 
Minister to England, 92; removes him, 93, 
94; Dr. Holmes's impressions of, 405; 
elected President, 455; appoints Motley- 
Minister to England and Hoar Attorney- 
General, 456; moved by one of the Bigloiv 
Papers, 474, 475; demands Hoar's resigna- 
tion, 478; also Motley's, 479; opposition 
to his reelection, 500. 

Gray, Prof. Asa, on Jeffries Wyman, 423, 
424. 

Gray, Major John C, 290. 

Greeley, Horace, nominated for the Presi- 
dency, 500. 

Greene, George W., intimate friend of Long- 
fellow, 412, 450. 

Greenslet, Ferris, quoted, 74. 

Guild, Rev. Edward Chipman, on Agassiz 
as a teacher, 34. 

Gurney, Prof. Ephraim Whitman, on Emer- 
son, 431; birth and education, 442; as a 
teacher, 442, 443; Dean of Harvard, 443; 
marriage and home life, 444; anecdote told 
by President Eliot, 445 ; death, 446. 

Guyot, Arnold, 161. 

Hale, Edward Everett, on Lowell's generos- 
ity, 78. 

Hallam, Henry, commends Prescott's Fer- 
dinand and Isabella, 185. 

Harte, Bret, and Agassiz, 37, 38; described 
by Mrs. Fields, 375, 376. 

Harvard College, influence of Agassiz on, 30; 



Index 



509 



Commemoration, 401-03; new departures 
under Pres. Eliot, 244, 476, 477; receives 
Brighton meadows from Longfellow, 480; 
corner-stone of Memorial Hall laid, 482; 
connection of Club members with: C. F. 
Adams, 449, 484; Agassiz, 30, 33, 36; 
Appleton, 218; Brimmer, 366; Cabot, 260, 
264; Dana, 39, 40,- Dwight, 47; Emerson, 
S3, 448; FeltoR, 159, 289; Gurney, 442, 
443, 446; Hedge, 277, 279, 280; Hoar, 63, 
70; Holmes, 146-49; Estes Howe, 283, 
284; W. M. Hunt, 465; Longfellow, 135, 
136; Lowell, 73, 76; Motley, 83; Norton, 
238, 244, 245; Peirce,96, 97, 105; Prescott, 
182, 183; Sumner, 299, 301; Ward, 109; 
Whipple, 118; Whittier, 192, 344; Wyman, 
420, 421. 

Harvard Musical Association, 49, 51, 52, 
168. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, on Kavanagk, 27; 
becomes a member of the Club, 167; in 
Italy and England, 206; anecdotes of, 207, 
209; characterization by Lowell, 208; at 
Bowdoin, 208, 209; at Brook Farm, 210; 
friendship with Emerson and Longfellow, 
211, 212, 213; love of children, 212, 213; 
aids Delia Bacon, 213, 214; happy relation 
with his publishers, 214; returns to Amer- 
ica, 235; in 1863, 315; friendship with 
Franklin Pierce, 320 n., 345, 347; Henry 
James on, 331, 332; letter to Longfellow, 
335; in failing health, 344; death, 345; 
Emerson on, 346, 347; memorial poem by 
Longfellow, 347, 348; estimates of, by 
Bridge, 349, Fields, 350, J. K. Hosmer and 
William Allingham, 351. 

Hedge, Frederick Henry, influenced by Ger- 
man literature and philosophy, 277; min- 
ister in Arlington and Bangor, 278; Phi 
Beta Kappa orator at Harvard, 279; 
literary work, 279, 280; minister in Provi- 
dence and Brookline, 279; professor at 
Harvard, 279, 280; not a born teacher, 
280; his Reason in Religion, 463, 464. 

Hedge, Levi, professor at Harvard, 277, 278. 

Herbert, George, his "ideal man," 145. 

Higginson, Major Henry Lee, 52, 85, 290, 
402 n.y 430 ji., 444. 

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 77; remi- 
niscences of Benjamin Peirce, 96, 97; on 
Whittier's reticence, 190, '191; attempts 
rescue of Anthony Burns, 274 n. 

Hill, Rev. Thomas, 99. 

Hillard, George S., 314. 

Hoar, Ebenezer Rockwood, on R. H. Dana, 
Jr., 43; ancestry, 63; at Harvard, 63; 
friendship with Lowell, 64, 403, 416; a 



successful lawyer, 64; his literary taste, 
64, 67; swims the Tiber, 65; "Conscience 
Whig," 65 ; Justice of the Court of Com- 
mon Pleas, opinion of Fugitive Slave Law, 
66; his keen wit, 68, 69; unpopular among 
politicians, 69, 461; his strong religious 
faith, 69, 70; personal appearance, 70; 
portrait of, in Harvard Union, 71; pro- 
poses health of Stillman, 178, 179; Justice 
of Massachusetts Supreme Court, 203; 
tribute to Sumner, 307; Attorney-General, 
456-58; nominated for Supreme Court, 
461, 462; "a man who snubbed sev- 
enty Senators," 461, 462; resignation de- 
manded, 69, 478. 

Hoar, Elizabeth, 64, 68. 

Hoar, George Frisbie, 301; appreciation of 
Felton, 162, 163; on Whittier, 189, 195. 

Hoar, Samuel, 290. 

Holmes, Rev. Abiel, record of the birth of his 
firstborn, 143. 

Holmes, John, 61, 282, 284; a good saying of, 
179. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, says the Atlantic 
Club never existed, 16; memories of Sat- 
urday Club's early days, 23, 24; his appel- 
lation for Agassiz, 33; contrast with Low- 
ell, 79; sketches career of Motley, 82, 83; 
A Parting Health (to Motley), 133; a medi- 
cal student in Paris, 143, 144; a practi- 
tioner, 145; professor of anatomy and 
physiology, 146-49; the microscope his 
favourite toy, 146; described by Dr. 
Cheever, 146; his literary work, 146, 147, 
150, 151, 167; his wit, 148, 149, 154; on 
Stuart's portrait of Washington, 149; his 
homes, 150; his love for the Hub, 150, 171; 
prized the Saturday Club, 152, 153; de- 
scribed by Mrs. Fields, 153; interested in 
his own personality, 154; reverent and 
religious, 154, 155, 413; close friend of 
Mrs. Stowe, 155; his creed, 156; on moral 
automatism, 156; comment on his own 
photograph, 156; his service to young 
mothers, 157, 167, 168; last years and 
death, 157; ambitious to be thought a 
poet, 167, 168; De Sauty quoted, 177, 178; 
poem for the Burns centennial, 198, 199; 
fiftieth birthday dinner, 203; Brother 
Jonathan's Lament for Sister Caroline 
quoted, 249, 250; and Anthony Trollope, 
257, 258; Never or Now quoted, 291, 
292; Shakspeare quoted, 340; Farewell to 
Agassiz quoted, 397; introduces H. H. 
Brownell to the Club, 399; letter to Mot- 
ley (1865), 404, 405; his feeling about 
Dante, 438, 439; on the discomforts of 



5IO 



Index 



taverns, 440; poem to Longfellow (1868), 
450; on changes at Harvard by Presi- 
dent Eliot, 476. 

Holmes, Judge Oliver Wendell, Jr., 290, 291. 

Honorary degrees, 448, 481. 

Hooper, Capt. Edward W., 290, 293. 

Hosmer, James Kendall, describes Agassiz, 
31, 32; first meeting with Longfellow, 138; 
on Hawthorne, 315, 316; experience with 
Gov. Andrew, 363-65. 

Howe, Dr. Estes, a bit overshadowed by his 
associates, 282; birth and education, 283, 
284; a doctor in Ohio, 284; marriage, 284; 
active in Abolition politics, 284; a man 
of affairs, 285 ; elected a member of the 
Club, 285; his last years, 285, 286. 

Howe, Dr. Henry Marion, reminiscences of 
a meeting of the Club, 321. 

Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward, 269, 272, 273, 402. 

Howe, M. A. De Wolfe, quoted, 316. 

Howe, Samuel, father of Estes Howe, 283. 

Howe, Dr. Samuel Gridley, 166; relations 
with John Brown, 202, 206; investigates 
health of soldiers, 253; one of the most 
romantic characters of last century, 269; 
birth and education, 269, 270; joins Greek 
patriots, 270; appearance and character- 
istics, 270, 271, 273, 274; takes charge of 
Perkins Institution for the Blind, 271, 
272; sent by Lafayette-to aid Polish refu- 
gees, 271; special friendships, 272, 273; 
first meeting with Julia Ward, 272; mar- 
riage, 273; work for feeble-minded, 273, 
274; goes to aid of Cretans, 274; active 
against slavery, 274, 295; Charles T. 
Brooks's poem on, 275; helps recruit 
coloured soldiers, 312. 

Howells, William Dean, 406; on Agassiz, 36- 
38; jest on Henry James, Sr., 325. 

Hughes, Sarah Forbes, Letters and Recollec- 
tions of John Murray Forbes, 313 n.; 
quoted, 232. 

Hughes, Thomas, 481. 

Humboldt, Alexander von, hundredth anni- 
versary celebrated, 461. 

Hunt, Leigh, 197 n., 214. 

Hunt, William Morris, joins the Club, 464, 
465; his mother, 465; his art studies, 465, 
466; in Newport and Boston, 467; some 
unsuccessful portraits, 468; portrait of 
Sumner, 468, 469; as a teacher, 469; some 
characteristic sayings, 470, 473; turns to 
landscape painting, 470; mural painting, 
471; his death, 472; his characteristics, 
472. 

Huntington, Rev. F. D., collaborates with 
Dr. Hedge, 279. 



Irving, Washington, surrenders historical 
theme to Prescott, 185. 

Jackson, Dr. Charles T., 270 ». 

Jackson, Dr. James, 144. 

James, Garth Wilkinson, 327, 328, 430 n. 

James, Henry, Senior, 7, 8, 290; chosen into 
the Club, 321, 330; his early fight against 
Calvinism, 322; goes to Princeton Theo- 
logical Seminary, 323; friendship with 
Emerson, 324; a Swedenborgian, 325; 
takes his children to Europe to study, 326; 
settles in Newport, 327; appearance and 
characteristics, 327; home life, 327, 328; 
tilt with Alcott, 328, 329; on Carlyle, 3 30; 
on Hawthorne and W. E. Channing, 331, 
332; Midsummer quoted, 333. 

James, Henry, Jr., on Norton, 240, 241; on 
J. Elliot Cabot, 265; some reminiscences 
of Sumner, 306; on his father's faith, 325; 
at school in Europe, 326; Life of W. W. 
Story cited, 277; on the Gurneys, 445. 

James, Robertson, 327, 328, 430 n. 

Johnson, President Andrew, 447; and Mot- 
ley, 91, 417, 418. 

Johnson, Reverdy, Minister to England, 458, 

Kendrick, Prof. A. C, 103. 
Knowlton, Helen M., and W. M. Hunt, 469, 
471. 

Lafayette, Marquis, sends Dr. Howe to aid 
of Polish refugees, 271. 

Lathrop, George Parsons, 345. 

Lawrence, Bishop William, on R. H. Dana, 
Jr., 42. 

Lee, Col. Henry, reminiscences of Benjamin 
Peirce, 98, 99; on Gov. Andrew, 434. 

Leverrier, Urbain Jean Joseph, calculations 
pronounced inexact, 100. 

Lewis, Sir George Cornwall, a saying of, 1 16. 

Lincoln, Abraham, appoints Motley Minister 
to Austria, 88; Motley's estimate of, 90, 
91; and Gov. Andrew, 360-62; assassina- 
tion of, 394. 

Lind, Jenny, 100, lOi. 

Longfellow, Charles Appleton, 139, 320. 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, relations 
with Emerson, 26, 27; and Sumner, 28, 
288, 29s; and Agassiz, 31, 33; letter to 
Motley, 87, 88; Fiftieth Birthday of 
Agassiz, quoted, 131; student and pro- 
fessor at Bowdoin College, 135; succeeds 
George Ticknor at Harvard, 135; study 
and travel in Europe, 135, 137, 140; anti- 
slavery poems, 136; Evangeline, 137; 
Arabian in hospitality, 137; popularity 



Index 



5" 



of his poems, 138, 141; his outward ap- 
pearance, 138; his interest in music, 138, 
139; his married life, 139; translation of 
Dante, 139, 140, 319, 395, 412, 438; hon- 
oured in England, 140; death, 141; accused 
of fraud by Poe, 160; on Felton's death, 
164, 165, 288, 289; vexed at violation of 
game laws, 168; friendship with Haw- 
thorne, 211, 212; origin of Evangeline, 212; 
took the war hard, 255 ; on the "dangerous 
classes," 295; finishes translation of the 
Divine Comedy, 319; memorial poem on 
Hawthorne, 347, 348; Noel quoted, 354- 
$6; Italian poem to Lowell, 407, 408; 
honoured by Victor Emmanuel, 418; 
sixtieth birthday, 428; farewell dinner 
(1868), 449, 450; reception in England, 
451, 460; visits Italy, 456, 459; gives the 
Brighton meadows to Harvard, 480. 

Lovering, Prof. Joseph, resemblance to 
Tennyson, 451 n. 

Lowell, Col. Charles Russell, 269, 311, 317. 

Lowell, James Russell, first editor of the 
Atlantic Monthly, 17, 72, 128; dinner to, 
at Revere House, 25, 26; on Emerson, 61; 
on Judge Hoar, 64, 416, 457; birth, 72; 
education, 73; pure Yankee, 73; compared 
with Emerson, Hawthorne, and Long- 
fellow, 74; a well-equipped talker, 74, 75; 
rich in cosmopolitan experience, 76; his 
attachment to the Club, 77, 78; his char- 
acter, 78; always a Romanticist, 79; 
affection of his intimates, 80; friendship 
with VV. J. Stillman, 129, 130; with the 
Adirondack Club, 172; story of, 173; 
account of some Club dinners, 178, 179; 
fortieth birthday, 200; verse portrait of 
Hawthorne, 208; change inHosea Biglow's 
views of war, 255-57; Washers of the 
Shroud quoted, 287, 288; tribute to Robert 
G. Shaw, 318; his work on the North 
American Review, 334; reclothes Hosea 
Biglow for Emerson's Parnassus, 334 and 
n.; Commemoration Ode, 401; poem for 
Longfellow's sixtieth birthday, 428, 429; 
publishes Under the Willows, 453, 454; 
anecdote of, 454; antipodal to Thoreau, 
475, 476; friendship with Thomas Hughes, 
481; praises C. F. Adams, 498. 

Lowell Institute, lectures, by Lowell at, 25; 
by Agassiz, 30; by Whipple, 118, 206; 
by Felton, 162; by Jeffries Wyman, 421. 

Lyceum system, influence of, 119, 149, 439. 

Lyman, Lieut.-Col. Theodore, 222, 290. 

Mann, Horace, and Dr. Howe, 273. 
Mason and Slidell incident, 256, 257, 495. 



Massachusetts Quarterly Review, the, 263. 

McClellan, Gen. George B., visits Boston, 
319. 320. 

Melville, Herman, 76. 

Meyer, Mrs., restaurant of, 13. 

Milman, Dean, 186. 

Mitford, Mary Russell, describes Dr. 
Holmes, 156. 

Monti, Luigi, Italian exile, befriended by 
Longfellow, 139. 

Moore, Prof. Charles H., on Norton's teach- 
ing, 244. 

Morris, William, 161; friendship with Nor- 
ton, 243. 

Morse, John Torrey, quoted, 18; on Gov. 
Andrew, 435; Life of Dr. Holmes cited, 
143, 157, 440. 

Motley, John Lothrop, his career outlined 
by Dr. Holmes, 82, 83; birth and educa- 
tion, 83; Morton's Hope, 83, 84; first his- 
torical work, 84; influence of Prescott, 84, 
185, 186; work in Europe, 85, 86; has 
difficulty in finding a publisher, 86, 452; 
success of The Dutch Republic, 86, 87; be- 
comes a member of the Club, 87; congrat- 
ulatory letter from Longfellow, 87, 88; 
Minister to Austria, 88; friendship with 
Bismarck, 88, 89, 94; letter to Mrs. Lin- 
coln after the assassination, 90, 91; re- 
turns to Boston, 91; a witty saying, 92; 
Minister to England, 92, 93, 456, 458, 
459) 479; friendship with Sumner, 93; 
letter to Bismarck C1870), 94, 95; dies in 
England, 95; praised by Dean Stanley, 95; 
dinner to, 132, 133; recalled from Austria, 
416-18; in Presidential campaign of 1868, 
449; literary work, 452, 453. 

Nahant, T. G. Appleton's nickname for, 222. 

Nation, the, established, 404. 

Naushon, Mr. Forbes's island, 230. 

Neptune, planet, discovered, 100. 

New England, in the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, 1-4. 

New England Emigrant Aid Society, 358. 

New England Loyal Publication Society, 
work of, 239, 294. 

New England Magazine, the, 129 n. 

Newhall, Col. Frederic C, quoted, 393. 

Norton, Charles Eliot, describes dinner to 
Lowell, 25, 26; recollection of the Wards, 
no; friendship with W. J. Stillman, 130; 
on Longfellow's kindliness, 137; consults 
with Longfellow over translation of 
Dante, 140, 242, 395; recollections of 
Hawthorne, 215; influence of Ruskin, 238, 
242, 243, 454; war service, 238, 239; mar- 



512 



Index 



ried, 239, 240; his home at Shady Hill, 
340, 241, 244; literary and sociological 
interests, 241; friendship with Parkman, 
241, 242; translation of Dante, 242; five 
years in Europe, 242, 243; death of his 
wife, 243; friendship with William Morris 
and Carlyle, 243; Professor of the Fine 
Arts at Harvard, 244; his teaching ethical, 
245; other relations with Harvard, 245; 
advice to a young man, 246; his home at 
Ashfield, 246, 247; misapprehended in his 
day, 347; writes Curtis about the Emanci- 
pation Proclamation, 293; an editor of the 
North American Review, 316, 334; letter 
to Curtis (1863), 320; annoyed by black- 
balling in the Club, 383; estimate of Gov. 
Andrew, 391; in Italy, 482. 

Ogden, Rollo, biographer of Prescott, 182, 

184, 185. 
Olmsted, Frederick Law, 258, 320. 

Paine, Albert Bigelow, biographer of Mark 

Twain, 194. 
Paine, John K., 402. 
Parker, Francis Edward, law partner of J. 

Elliot Cabot, 262. 
Parker, Harvey D., 22. 
Parker, Theodore, and J. S. Dwight, 47. 
Parker House, meeting-place of the Club, 

21, 22; Thoreau's experience at, 60. 
Parkman, Francis, 76; letter to F. H. Under- 
wood, 18 «.; friendship with Norton, 241, 

242. 
Parsons, Gov. Lewis E., 406. 
Parsons, Theophilus, 186. 
Peabody, Andrew P., Holmes's jest, 151, 152. 
Peabody, Elizabeth, advises J. S. Dwight on 

prayer, 48. 
Peabody, George, endows Museum of 

American Archseology, 426. 
Peace Congress at Washington (1861), 250, 

251. 
Pearson, Henry Greenleaf, An American 

Railroad-Builder cited, 229; Life of John 

A. Andfew quoted, 351, 352, 359,432,433, 

Peirce, Benjamin, professor at Harvard, 96; 
reminiscences of, 96-100; challenges Le- 
verrier's calculations, 100; his judgment 
in emergency, 100, loi; head of the Coast 
Survey, loi; anecdotes of, 102, 105,403; 
Ben Yamen's Song of Geometry, 102, 103, 
105, 106; some characteristics of, 104; 
consulting astronomer to Coast Survey, 

„ 253, 254- 

Peirce, Prof. James Mills, 100. 



Perkins, Col. Thomas Handasyd, 260; gives 
house and grounds for Institution for the 
Blind, 272. 

Perry, Bliss, on Francis H. Underwood, 14, 
17- 

Perry, Nora, 189, 190. 

Phillips, Wendell, 166, 486. 

Philosophers' Camp, the, 170, 175, 282. 

Pierce, Edward L., heads Educational Com- 
mission, 292, 293. 

Pierce, President Franklin, and Hawthorne, 
.209, 315, 320 M., 345, 347. 

Pierce, Dr. John, 279. 

Poe, Edgar Allan, charges Longfellow with 
literary fraud, 160. 

Prescott, WlUiam Hickling, influence on 
Motley, 84; becomes a member of the 
Club, 167, 180; first member of the Club 
to die, 180; anecdote of, 181; deeply 
mourned, 181; "rosy and young," 182; his 
biographers, 182; his ancestry, 182; loses 
sight of left eye, 183; marries Susan 
Amory, 183; has passion for historical 
writing, 183, 184; publishes Ferdinand and 
Isabella, 184, 185; relations with Irving 
and Motley, 185, 186; secret of his enjoy- 
ment of life, 186, 187; death, 199. 

Public service of Club members: C. F. 
Adams, 253, 448, 449, 485-501; Andrew, 
351, 358-65; T. G. Appleton, 221, 226; 
Brimmer, 368, 369; Cabot, 254, 264; 
Dana, 44, 344, 410, 411, 429, 455; Forbes, 
231, 232, 234, 250-53, 352, 359; Asa Gray, 
254; Hawthorne, 210; Judge Hoar, 69, 
253, 456, 462, 478; Estes Howe, 285; S. G. 
Howe, 253, 271, 273, 275, 312; Lowell, 76; 
Motley, 84, 88, 91-93, 449, 456; Norton, 
239; Peirce, 104, 253, 254; Sumner, 297, 
302; Woodman, 124, 126. 

Putnam, Simeon, Felton's teacher, 159. 

Quincy, Edmund, 166, 295, 439. 

Radical Club, the, 191. 

Rantoul, Hon. Robert S., reminiscences ol 

Benjamin Peirce, 99, lOO, 103, 104; of 

Hawthorne, 209, 210. 
Reed, E. J., Chief Constructor of British 

Navy, praises The Building of the Ship, 

459. 460. 
Rice, Alexander H., and Emerson, 383. 
Richards, Mrs. Laura E., on Dr. Howe, 271, 

273; writes of the relation between him 

and Sumner, 304. 
Ripley, George, 48, 49, 278. 
Robblns, Rev. Chandler, anecdote of, 382. 
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 240. 



Index 



513 



Round Hill School, Northampton, 83, 96, 
109, 159, 217, 227, 283. 

Rowse, Samuel Worcester, portrait of Haw- 
thorne, 350; elected to the Club, 356; his 
familiarity with Shakspeare, 388; draws 
crayon head of Longfellow, 388; portrait 
of Emerson, 389; his best portraits, 389, 
390; ill-health and death, 391. 

Ruskin, John, relations with Norton, 238, 
242, 243,454. 

Russell, Lord John, C. F. Adams's significant 
message to, 314; and Motley, 453; and 
Adams, 493-98. 

Russell, William G., on Yankee wit, 68. 

Sampson, Admiral William Thomas, 290. 

Sanborn, Frank B., 12, 13, 327; tribute to 
Benjamin Peirce, 97; on S. G. Howe, 269. 

San Domingo, annexation urged by President 
Grant, 297; opposed by Sumner, 479. 

Sanitary Commission, the National, 239, 
258, 259, 264, 275. 

Sargent, Capt. Charles S., 290. 

Sargent, Mrs, John T., 191. 

Saturday Club, the, origins of, i; foreshad- 
owings, 4, s; nears realization, 9; born, 
11; beginnings of, 12-16; original mem- 
bers, 19; first additions, 19, 20; classi- 
fication of members, 21; meeting-places, 
21, 22, 115; elaborateness of early din- 
ners, 22, 23; sketches of first members, 
30-127; incorporated (1886), 46; attempts 
to use influence at Washington, 93, 479; 
many members contributors to the At- 
lantic, 128; members buy tract of land in 
Adirondacks, 131; dinner to Agassiz, 131; 
dinner to Motley, 132; called "The Mu- 
tual Admiration Society," 153; aggressive 
reformers not desirable members, 166; in- 
formality in early years, 167; some Club 
dinners in 1858, 168, 169, 178, 179; the 
Burns centennial, 197-99; celebrates 
Lowell's fortieth birthday, 200-02; and 
Dr. Holmes's fiftieth, 203-05; activities 
of members in i860, 234; most of the 
members strong anti-slavery men, 250; 
activities of members in 1861, 253, 254, 
258, 259; death of Pres. Felton, 288, 289; 
war work of members in 1862, 290-95; 
and in 1863, 312-15, 317, 320; literary 
work, 316, 318, 319; notes by Emerson 
on Club meetings in 1864, 336, 337; three 
hundredth anniversary of Shakspeare's 
birth, 337-43; political activity of mem- 
bers in 1864, 351, 352; Scott centenary, 
385, 386; dinner to Agassiz (1865), 396- 
99; some club dinners in 1865, 399, 406; 



in 1866, 412, 413, 415; literary work of 
Club members in 1866, 416; some dinners 
in 1867, 428, 436, 437, 439; farewell din- 
ner to Longfellow (1868), 449-51; some 
meetings in 1868, 452, 453; activities of 
some of the members in 1869, 456-64; 
some meetings in 1870, 475, 477, 483. 

Scott, Gen. Winfield, at outbreak of Civil 
War, 250, 251. 

Scudder, Horace E., Lije of Lowell cited, 
17, 129, 257, 394. 

Seguin, Dr. Edouard, on idiocy, 273. 

Seward, William Henry, 458, 489; and Mot- 
ley, 91, 417, 418; fails of presidential 
nomination, 234; and Charles Francis 
Adams, 493, 494. 

Shady Hill, Norton's Cambridge home, 240, 
241, 244. 

Shakers, the, 21 1, 347. 

Shakspeare, three hundredth anniversary of 
birth celebrated by the Club, 337-43. 

Shaw, Col. Robert Gould, death of, 317, 
402 n.; tributes of Lowell and Emerson. 
318. 

Sheridan, Gen. Philip H., in the Shenandoah 
Valley, 393. 

Slavery, a dividing force, 135, 136, 160, 162; 
Scripture argument for, 169; activity of 
Club members against: in general, 162, 
250; of Gov. Andrew, 357, 360; of Martin 
Brimmer, 367; of Dana, 40-43; of Emer- 
son, 192; of Forbes, 203, 239; of Estes 
Howe, 284; of Dr. S. G. Howe, 274; of 
Longfellow, 136; of Sumner, 303; of 
Whittier, 189, 191. 

Sophocles, Prof. E. A., writes Greek epi- 
taph for Felton's gravestone, 164; and 
Longfellow translates it, 289; character- 
ization of, 289 n. 

Stanley, Dean A. P., eulogizes Motley, 95. 

Stanley, Hon. Lyulph, 414. 

Stanton, Secretary Edwin M., 405. 

Stearns, Major George L., 293, 312. 

Stephen, Leslie, on the Saturday Club 
circle, 77; letter to Norton quoted, 78, 79. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, an "incurable 
child," 74, 75. 

Stewart, Robert M., Governor of Missouri, 
203, 229. 

Stillman, William J., 129; friend of Lowell 
and Norton, 129, 130; conducts the 
Crayon, 130; lures Lowell to the Adiron- 
dack Mountains, 130; buys tract for the 
Adirondack Club, 131; arranges the first 
encampment, 169; paints picture of the 
group, 170, 171; his feehng for Agassiz, 
171, 172; passionate personal attachment 



514 



Index 



for Lowell, 172, 173; estimate of Emer- 
son, 173-75; account of "the Philoso- 
phers' Camp," 282; champion of the 
Cretans, 411; on Jeffries Wyman, 424. 

Story, William Wetmore, 277, 298; describes 
Sumner, 299. 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, close friendship 
with Dr. Holmes, 155, 438. 

Sullivan, Richard, procures Fields a place 
in Carter & Hendee's bookstore, 377. 

Sumner, Charles, 166, 284; Longfellow's 
friendship with, 28, 306; political an- 
tagonism of Felton, 28, 162, 304; friend- 
ship with Motley, 93; letter to Long- 
fellow on Prescott's death, 181, 199; 
relations with Whittier, 191, 192; cen- 
sured by Massachusetts Legislature, 191; 
treated by Dr. Brown-Sequard, 205; 
speech on the Trent affair, 288; only mem- 
ber of the Club chosen in 1862, 288; out- 

; line of his life, 297; in the Senate, 297, 
298, 302, 307, 458; connection with th2 
Club, 298; misrepresented, 298, 303; his 
plan of life in the Law School, 299; im- 
pressions of persons who knew him, 299- 
301; some of his intimate friends, 301, 
304-07; dominant in conversation, 303; 
Whittier's ode to, quoted, 307, 308; rela- 
tions with C. F. Adams, 453, 490; rela- 
tions with President Grant, 479. 

Symposium, the, 4, 5, 54. 

Taylor, Bayard, 191. 

Tennyson, Alfred, 380; visited by Longfel- 
low, 140, 451; greeting to Longfellow, 428. 

Thackeray, VV. M., on Prescott, 185. 

Thayer, Prof. James B., and the New Eng- 
land Loyal Publication Society, 294. 

Thompson, George, influence on Gov. 
Andrew, 357. 

Thoreau, Henry David, on clubs, 59, 60; 
criticises Whipple, 120; Emerson's ap- 
preciation of, 475, 476; antipodal to 
Lowell, 476. 

Ticknor, George, 76, 1 10; writes Life of 
Prescott, 182. 

Tompkins, Frank H., his portrait of Judge 
Hoar, 71. 

Town-and-Country Club, the, 5, 6, 54. 

Transcendental Club, the, 278. 

Trent affair, the, 256, 257, 288, 495. 

TroUope, Anthony, anecdote of, 257, 258. 

Trowbridge, John T., and H. H. Brownell, 
399, 400. 

Tuckerman, Prof. Edward, botanist, 7. 

Twain, Mark, at Whittier birthday dinner, 
194. 



Underwood, Francis H., literary adviser to 
Phillips & Sampson, 14, 17; the editor 
who never was editor, 14, 16, 17; on Long- 
fellow's anti-slavery influence, 136 n.; 
on Felton's mellowness, 160; on Whit- 
tier's social diffidence, 190. 

Union Club, Boston, 285; meeting-place of 
the Saturday Club, 115; establishment 
of, 295, 311; promoters of, 311. 

Vaughan, Henry, quoted, 208, 350. 
Vedder, Elihu, 467. 
Very, Jones, 260. 

Walker, Charles Howard, on Norton's so- 
called pessimism, 247. 

Walker, Gen. Francis A., 290. 

Walker, James, President of Harvard Col- 
lege, 70, 163, 182. 

Ward, George Cabot, brother of Samuel G. 
Ward, 115,445-. 

Ward, Julia, marries Dr. Howe, 272, 273. 

Ward, Samuel, brother of Julia Ward Howe, 

Ward, Samuel Gray, friendship with Emer- 
son, 5, 54, 113, 114, 116; letter to Norton, 
6; memories of the Club's early days, 23; 
birth and education, 109; marriage, 109; 
in Lenox, no, in, 116; agent of Bar- 
ings, III, 112, 115; contributor to the 
Dial, 112, 113; a many-sided man, 113; 
effects purchase of Alaska, 115; interested 
in establishing the Nation, 115; fond of 
best French literature, 115; later life and 
death, 116. 

Ward, Thomas Wren, father of Samuel G. 
Ward, 109, III; treasurer of the Athe- 
nseum, 113; death of, 114, 115. 

Whipple, Edwin Percy, Motley's opinion 
of, as a critic, 86, 87; on Motley, 91, 92; 
parallelism of his Uterary career with 
Walter Bagehot's, 117; birth, 118; as a 
critical essayist, 1 18, 119; influence of 
the Lyceum on, 119, 120; personal char- 
acteristics, 121; Recollections of Agassiz 
quoted, 121, 122; on the Saturday Club, 
122; some of his good sayings, 122; Dr. 
Bartol's tribute, 122, 123; one of the first 
to speak a good word for Whittier, 189; 
lectures at Lowell Institute, 206. 

Whist Club, the, 282, 285. 

White, Lois, afterward Mrs. Estes Howe, 
284. 

White, Maria, afterward Mrs. Lowell, 
284. 

Whitman, Walt, 195. 

Whittier, John Greenleaf, becomes a mem- 



Index 



515 



ber of the Club, 167, 188; habitually- 
avoided Club dinners, 188; a skilful lobby- 
ist for good causes, 189; no mere recluse, 
189; at dinners of the Atlantic Club, 190; 
remarks at memorial service for Sumner, 
191; friendship with Lowell, 191, 192; 
overseer of Harvard, 192; relations with 
Emerson, 192; friendships with women, 
193; seventieth birthday dinner, 194; 
eightieth birthday celebration, 195; his 
last poem, 195; qualities of his poetry, 
195, 196; ode to Sumner quoted, 30*7, 308; 
At Port Royal quoted, 316; poem on Gov. 
Andrew, 436. 

Willson, Forceythe, friendship with Lowell 
and Emerson, 400, 401. 

Winter, William, 212. 

Wit, Emerson on, 57; Yankee, 68. 



Woodman, Horatio, brought the Saturday 
Club into being, 12, 124; letter to Emer- 
son, 13; manager of feasts, 22; birth and 
characteristics, 124; a public-spirited 
man, 124, 126; a member of the Adiron- 
dack Club, 125; sketched in verse by 
Emerson, 125; a hero-worshipper of Rufus 
Choate, 125; death, 127; The Flag qnottd, 
251, 252. 

Wright, Chauncey, close friend of Rowse 
and Gurney, 390, 445 n. 

Wyman, Dr. Jeffries, birth and boyhood, 
420; member of the Boston Fire Depart- 
ment, 420; curator of the Lowell Insti- 
tute, 421; professor in Harvard Medical 
School, 421; an original experimenter, 
422, 425, 426; opinions of some friends, 
423-27; death, 427. 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



-."o^ '^. 



o • 



^-p^ ^ 









o> -r. 



,H -A 



.\- 






,0-' ^A 



t-v ^ 



%^ ^ 






00' 






a^ -7-, 









^'^^ 



'^A h 



^'^.%' 



\' 






^^ 



>.<^^ 



--y- 









,0 o^ 






,0 o 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



illlllllllll 
013 996 687 9 








